White Noise
Directed by: Geoffrey Sax
Written by: Niall Johnson
Starring: Michael Keaton, Deborah Kara Unger, Ray Price, Chandra West, Nicholas Elia.
Country: U.S.A.
Two static hisses.
Bad Reception
Flicks about the hereafter have to deal with the gullibility factor. We all—or most of us—know communicating with the dead is a bunch of hooey, but in the spirit of fun we're willing to entertain the probability that such stories exist as long as the filmmaker paints a believable world that could exist. It's a tough job, as this world must be seamless. One little crack in the story line, and the cinematic world disintegrates. That's why you can count successful films of this genre on two hands and where most of them are comedies. White Noise is of the suspense variety—a harder row to hoe—and despite some promise, it becomes a derived mess.
The story: Jonathan, an upscale architect—
Sorry, I have to stop for an aside. There is a tremendous class bias in most A- and certainly B-movies that spew from Hollywood. Heroes are always upscale architects, or engineers, or surgeons, or any one who lives in a neo-modern house with a Mondrian in the living room, a younger wife in the bedroom and a launch on the water outside. Only good and bad things happen to these celluloid people, because as far as Tinseltown is concerned, they're the only ones worth telling stories about that the great unwashed are willing to see. (Sadly, focus groups may tell them they're right. White Noise opened to $24 million US.)
The story continued . . . Jonathan, an upscale architect—who lives in chic digs with his younger, beautiful wife (an internationally acclaimed authoress—yawn) with a boat on a river, is a content man until aforementioned wife dies in a mysterious accident. After much unshakeable grief, he's approached by a man who tells him that Jonathan's wife is trying to reach him from the ‘other side' through the static on his radio and TV. Believers call this Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Jonathan thinks this is a load of crap until funny things starts happening to his wall clock and car radio. Now he's a believer and becomes obsessed with talking to—and seeing—his wife. He makes contact. Apparently, everything is not all sweetness and light where the wife is floating around. There are evil forces at work. With her help, Jonathan starts saving people who are in trouble, but not quite dead yet. Before all is said and done, we see elements of Poltergeist, Jaws, Superman (without the suit and on a small budget) and implausibly Silence of the Lambs. Quite a mish mash. This all comes to a, er, thrilling conclusion.
The film looks good, however. Obviously, there's a skilled journeymen's touch here—the camera work, the editing, the sound and good pacing by BBC TV veteran Geoffrey Sax. But a story's more than technical proficiency. There are three glaring problems that destroy the seamless world I mentioned earlier. People are tracked down, well no, really just found, by their first name and no addresses; Jonathan is (or should be) the prime suspect in his wife's death and is the last person to have been at three other fatalities and goes unquestioned by the police; and a cop takes 10 seconds to decipher a location on a blurry monitor that it's taken Jonathan hours to figure out. This is so the cop can show up at the climax in the nick of time.
By this point all semblance of the ‘real' world that's been created is now a comic book or a Saturday morning serial. Michael Keaton (as Jonathan) doesn't help matters with his inscrutable face.
More interesting than the film are the producers, Brightlight Pictures. They've been in the news recently threatening to decamp for Ontario or Quebec and better tax write-offs. Brightlight is the most active studio in British Columbia and their departure would certainly hurt the behind camera labour force. But would we be as upset if say, a widget factory went east. The product here is comparable. It would be easier to get on Brightlight's bandwagon if they weren't shills for American studios that turn out inferior product like White Noise film after film. Maybe we could get supportive, excited, angry even, if some of those dollars they're going to make from White Noise went to a project with more meaningful ambitions, American or not. Who says Provincial Liberal cabinet ministers don't have taste and a few brains? Right now, Brightlight is not the best poster child for this issue.
