Yet, for a good long while, White Noise seems like it's going to be a really cool little thriller … nothing remotetly excellent, but solid and serviceable. And, yeah, there is something unexpectedly commanding about Michael Keaton these days, his craggly face reflecting the march of aging that we all shall endure; his presence indicating that we needn't all die young, like James Dean or Jared Leto. What, Jared Leto's still alive? Well, he'd be better off dead. The film banks on some cool ideas … mainly, that EVP (electronic recordings of the dead) offers a glimpse into the world beyond ours. Keaton, as a grieving widower increasingly obsessed by capturing his dead wife on VHS and/or cassette tape (despite the logical notion that most of us would be trying to document our dead loved ones with better forms of A/V replication, such as DVD-R or DualDisc® technology) is definitely sympathetic. Sadly, the cool concept and lingering creep-factor established early on degenerates into terribly clichéd bullshit, even dragging Keaton into the requisite drippy-abandoned-warehouse, where he must confront his vaguely-established nemeses (who, it seems, are the Blue Man Group). The unfortunate dip into supernatural blather in the last reel of this film sinks what, early on, seeemed like a promising set-up to a wondefully visceral horror flick. Instead, what transpires is a whole lot of badly-thought-out bullshit that ends up meaning less than nothing to the viewer. Why can't Hollywood scare me anymore? I mean, with films, not with Lindsay Lohan's alarmingly emaciated body.
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