Review: White Noise (2005)

White Noise

IMDB rate: 5,5

Genre: Ghost

I was pretty amazed by the fact that this movie was made already 9 years ago! I was convinced that this movie was perhaps 4 or 5 years old, but my memories fooled me. Does this mean I'm getting older? 

Doesn't mind, a few weeks ago I watched White Noise for perhaps the fifth time. It's strange but when I'm visiting a second hand market and there's somebody who sells DVD's, 9 out of 10 people is selling this DVD. It's strange how many people own this DVD, or actually... it's strange how many people want to get rid of this DVD.

When I first watched this movie I loved it. I thought it was absolutely amazing and even slightly frightening. After seeing it a couple of times it does become a bit boring though, especially the ending is not really good I think. Other than that I think it's especially an interesting movie. It contains very interesting subjects that even has the possibility to be true. The subject is very original and that's probably what keeps me interested in this movie.

First thing that's good about this movie is the acting. Michael Keaton, an amazing actor, plays Jonathan Rivers who just lost his wife. His wife is trying to communicate with him through EVP. His reactions to this are very understandable. At first he's of course hesitant about this EVP stuff, when things start to happen he gets curious and gets dragged into the whole EVP world. His breakdowns are very believable and so are his change of reactions. I was a bit disappointed though by his reactions towards his son, he could've been a bit nicer to him. But of course, this isn't Michael Keaton's fault, it's just the script.

Anna Rivers is played by Chandra West. Since she dies very quickly we don't get to see much of her, besides some vague EVP ghost thing shots, and the things she says are being soft spoken or repeated very often. Can't say much about her acting and stuff since she's hardly in the movie, even though she's the biggest point of interest. Deborah Kara Unger plays Jonathan's new friend Sarah Tate. To be honest, I was incredibly bothered by her bad acting performances. Her face is as emotionless as Kristen Stewart's and her acting wasn't very convincing. She tried too hard.

I thought there were a few reasonable scares in there, especially in the beginning there are some good jump scares that made me jump of the couch even though I saw the movie many times already. The EVP looks cool as well, although I'm not very convinced that this could ever be a real thing (but who knows?).

I think this movie has quite some potential to be scary. Like I already said, there are quite some good scares and you will get automatically uncomfortable because of the subject. It plays with your mind somehow. The beginning is build up exactly right in my opinion, the third half of the film though suddenly goes very quick which causes a lot of confusion for the end part of the film. That was a bit disappointing actually. The writing could've been improved on some points, but overall I think that White Noise is just a decent, perhaps slightly good, horror movie.

My personal rate: 6/10