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White Noise (HD DVD)
Universal // PG-13 // January 8, 2008 // Region 0
List Price: $29.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
White Noise opens with a brief explanation of Electronic Voice Phenomena -- messages from the dead that are masked in static -- and just a couple 
of minutes later, an impossibly gorgeous and successful writer played by Chandra West cheerfully announces that she's pregnant. That's not exactly a winning combination in this sort of supernatural thriller, and architect Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) is devastated when she abruptly disappears that night. The weeks drag on without any sign of Anna, alive or otherwise, until a dumpy Brit reveals to Jonathan that his wife is dead and that she's feverishly been trying to reach out to him from the other side. Undeterred by Raymond's warnings about violent spirits or even the grisly murder of the old man, Jonathan fills his palatial townhouse with VCRs and tape decks, all in the hopes of catching a fleeting glimpse of his late wife.
Most of White Noise's runtime is spent with Jonathan poring through hours of static, highlighting waveforms and fiddling with EQ levels on his PC, and digging through reams and reams of notes in Raymond's archives, and the movie is every bit as enthralling and pulse-pounding as that sounds. There's never really any danger of anything remotely interesting happening throughout White Noise. Jonathan's obsessive search in the static -- clawing desperately for some remnant of a woman he can't bring himself to admit is gone -- doesn't alienate himself from the people around him. His young son and ex-wife shrug it off. He's apparently a partner in his architecture firm, so he's free to duck out and stare at monitors in his den for days at a time. Jonathan's late wife does leave brief glimpses of the future in his staticy videos, sending him on a set of ghostly missions to make the world a better place, but no matter how the screenplay clumsily tries to tie it all together later, it feels arbitrary and really kind of dull. There's never any sense of dread looming throughout White Noise, turning to cheap, lazy jump scares to try to infuse the movie with some sort of energy.
Niall Johnson's screenplay doesn't hold up to any real scrutiny. The motivation of the 'bad spirits' that don't really do anything until the climax is left unexplained, the concept of Jonathan opening the doorway for them to enter this realm goes nowhere, and director Geoffrey Sax admits in the disc's audio commentary to not having any idea why so much of the movie's supernatural activity takes place precisely at 2:30. White Noise builds to one of the mostly aggressively awful climaxes of the past few years, from the depressing sight of Michael Keaton flailing around at black CG smears to the inconsistency and altogether pointlessness of what these e-e-e-e-vil spirits can actually do.
It's almost as if Niall Johnson shoehorned every last germ of an idea he brainstormed for White Noise into the screenplay. It's muddled, unfocused, and wildly inconsistent, teetering back and forth from sappy melodrama, an otherworldly murder mystery, and a supernatural thriller taking its cues from the recent wave of J-horror, fumbling each of the genres it tries to juggle along the way. The atmosphere and promise of its first act are completely discarded as the movie plods along, and even a
spirited lead turn by Michael Keaton isn't nearly enough to salvage such an abysmal screenplay. Skip It.
Video: Universal has been hit or miss with the quality of their catalog titles, especially over the past year or so, but White Noise's 2.39:1 presentation teeters on the brink of perfection. For a movie with such a dour premise, the image is more bright and colorful than expected throughout much of its runtime. The palette naturally takes on more of a bluish cast at night, bolstered by deep, robust blacks and some striking interplay between light and shadow. As well as the image generally holds up under low light, the thin veneer of grain visible throughout the movie does become more heavily pronounced in the dark, a shift that can be dramatic enough to distract. The VC-1 encode doesn't buckle under the weight of that grain, and the static on Jonathan's bank of monitors is rendered without any compression hiccups either. The presence of fine detail is often startling, particularly when the camera closes in, and it's so crisp and clear that even a minor typo in one of its newspaper articles stands out. A very strong effort from Universal.
Audio: White Noise does sport a lossless Dolby TrueHD soundtrack, but the sound design is awfully lackluster for this sort of supernatural-tinged thriller. The rears are reserved mostly for light ambiance, never really bothering to establish much of an unsettlingly creepy atmosphere. The rear channels and subwoofer both briefly roar to life when punctuating White Noise's lazy jump scares, and sometimes the surrounds will screech with the static that Jonathan's obsessing over, but it's all pretty lightweight until the swirling moans and whispers of the undead envelop him in the climax. White Noise's TrueHD track is perfectly sound on a technical level, boasting clear, nicely balanced dialogue and a beefy dynamic range, but the audio just isn't as immersive or eerie as it really ought to be.
Aside from the lossless audio, White Noise also offers subtitle streams and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtracks in English and French.
Extras: The extras from the 2005 DVD have all been carried over to this
release, presented again in standard definition in a 4x3 frame.
Michael Keaton and director Geoffrey Sax dial in a particularly lifeless audio commentary. There are a couple of interesting notes, but they're almost entirely driven by Keaton, who briefly took the reins as a D.P. during filming, can be somewhat critical about stretches of his performance, and prompts Sax to discuss how his background directing for the BBC made for a particularly nimble, economical shoot. When Keaton steps aside for the last forty minutes or so, Sax almost stops talking entirely, chiming in every few minutes for a quick note or two. The feature commentary is a waste, and the optional chatter over White Noise's ten minutes of deleted scenes doesn't fare much better. It doesn't help that these extra scenes are so bland themselves, either continuing to reiterate something that had been established in the movie or offering slightly more graphic extensions that had to be trimmed out to land its PG-13 rating.
The half hour of extras that round out this HD DVD are anchored around Tom and Lisa Butler from the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena. They and a handful of other supernatural investigators chat briefly about their involvement with EVP in "Making Contact" (9 min.), offer viewers some tips and tricks to recording the dead with everyday household items (4 min.), and take their show on the road to a, um, haunted castle (15 min). The Butlers briefly note their healthy response to skepticism, but if you haven't already bought into the concept of EVP, these extras won't do anything to convince you.
Conclusion: Thanks mostly to a sloppy, aimless screenplay, White Noise squanders its potentially intriguing premise, leaving this thriller without much in the way of actual thrills. The extras on this HD DVD are every bit as lifeless as the movie itself, although at least the disc looks great and is backed by a lossless soundtrack. Skip It.
The images scattered around this review are promotional stills and aren't meant to represent the way the movie looks in high definition.
of minutes later, an impossibly gorgeous and successful writer played by Chandra West cheerfully announces that she's pregnant. That's not exactly a winning combination in this sort of supernatural thriller, and architect Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) is devastated when she abruptly disappears that night. The weeks drag on without any sign of Anna, alive or otherwise, until a dumpy Brit reveals to Jonathan that his wife is dead and that she's feverishly been trying to reach out to him from the other side. Undeterred by Raymond's warnings about violent spirits or even the grisly murder of the old man, Jonathan fills his palatial townhouse with VCRs and tape decks, all in the hopes of catching a fleeting glimpse of his late wife. Most of White Noise's runtime is spent with Jonathan poring through hours of static, highlighting waveforms and fiddling with EQ levels on his PC, and digging through reams and reams of notes in Raymond's archives, and the movie is every bit as enthralling and pulse-pounding as that sounds. There's never really any danger of anything remotely interesting happening throughout White Noise. Jonathan's obsessive search in the static -- clawing desperately for some remnant of a woman he can't bring himself to admit is gone -- doesn't alienate himself from the people around him. His young son and ex-wife shrug it off. He's apparently a partner in his architecture firm, so he's free to duck out and stare at monitors in his den for days at a time. Jonathan's late wife does leave brief glimpses of the future in his staticy videos, sending him on a set of ghostly missions to make the world a better place, but no matter how the screenplay clumsily tries to tie it all together later, it feels arbitrary and really kind of dull. There's never any sense of dread looming throughout White Noise, turning to cheap, lazy jump scares to try to infuse the movie with some sort of energy.
Niall Johnson's screenplay doesn't hold up to any real scrutiny. The motivation of the 'bad spirits' that don't really do anything until the climax is left unexplained, the concept of Jonathan opening the doorway for them to enter this realm goes nowhere, and director Geoffrey Sax admits in the disc's audio commentary to not having any idea why so much of the movie's supernatural activity takes place precisely at 2:30. White Noise builds to one of the mostly aggressively awful climaxes of the past few years, from the depressing sight of Michael Keaton flailing around at black CG smears to the inconsistency and altogether pointlessness of what these e-e-e-e-vil spirits can actually do.
It's almost as if Niall Johnson shoehorned every last germ of an idea he brainstormed for White Noise into the screenplay. It's muddled, unfocused, and wildly inconsistent, teetering back and forth from sappy melodrama, an otherworldly murder mystery, and a supernatural thriller taking its cues from the recent wave of J-horror, fumbling each of the genres it tries to juggle along the way. The atmosphere and promise of its first act are completely discarded as the movie plods along, and even a
spirited lead turn by Michael Keaton isn't nearly enough to salvage such an abysmal screenplay. Skip It. Video: Universal has been hit or miss with the quality of their catalog titles, especially over the past year or so, but White Noise's 2.39:1 presentation teeters on the brink of perfection. For a movie with such a dour premise, the image is more bright and colorful than expected throughout much of its runtime. The palette naturally takes on more of a bluish cast at night, bolstered by deep, robust blacks and some striking interplay between light and shadow. As well as the image generally holds up under low light, the thin veneer of grain visible throughout the movie does become more heavily pronounced in the dark, a shift that can be dramatic enough to distract. The VC-1 encode doesn't buckle under the weight of that grain, and the static on Jonathan's bank of monitors is rendered without any compression hiccups either. The presence of fine detail is often startling, particularly when the camera closes in, and it's so crisp and clear that even a minor typo in one of its newspaper articles stands out. A very strong effort from Universal.
Audio: White Noise does sport a lossless Dolby TrueHD soundtrack, but the sound design is awfully lackluster for this sort of supernatural-tinged thriller. The rears are reserved mostly for light ambiance, never really bothering to establish much of an unsettlingly creepy atmosphere. The rear channels and subwoofer both briefly roar to life when punctuating White Noise's lazy jump scares, and sometimes the surrounds will screech with the static that Jonathan's obsessing over, but it's all pretty lightweight until the swirling moans and whispers of the undead envelop him in the climax. White Noise's TrueHD track is perfectly sound on a technical level, boasting clear, nicely balanced dialogue and a beefy dynamic range, but the audio just isn't as immersive or eerie as it really ought to be.
Aside from the lossless audio, White Noise also offers subtitle streams and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtracks in English and French.
Extras: The extras from the 2005 DVD have all been carried over to this
release, presented again in standard definition in a 4x3 frame. Michael Keaton and director Geoffrey Sax dial in a particularly lifeless audio commentary. There are a couple of interesting notes, but they're almost entirely driven by Keaton, who briefly took the reins as a D.P. during filming, can be somewhat critical about stretches of his performance, and prompts Sax to discuss how his background directing for the BBC made for a particularly nimble, economical shoot. When Keaton steps aside for the last forty minutes or so, Sax almost stops talking entirely, chiming in every few minutes for a quick note or two. The feature commentary is a waste, and the optional chatter over White Noise's ten minutes of deleted scenes doesn't fare much better. It doesn't help that these extra scenes are so bland themselves, either continuing to reiterate something that had been established in the movie or offering slightly more graphic extensions that had to be trimmed out to land its PG-13 rating.
The half hour of extras that round out this HD DVD are anchored around Tom and Lisa Butler from the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena. They and a handful of other supernatural investigators chat briefly about their involvement with EVP in "Making Contact" (9 min.), offer viewers some tips and tricks to recording the dead with everyday household items (4 min.), and take their show on the road to a, um, haunted castle (15 min). The Butlers briefly note their healthy response to skepticism, but if you haven't already bought into the concept of EVP, these extras won't do anything to convince you.
Conclusion: Thanks mostly to a sloppy, aimless screenplay, White Noise squanders its potentially intriguing premise, leaving this thriller without much in the way of actual thrills. The extras on this HD DVD are every bit as lifeless as the movie itself, although at least the disc looks great and is backed by a lossless soundtrack. Skip It.
The images scattered around this review are promotional stills and aren't meant to represent the way the movie looks in high definition.
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