20 Years Later, ‘White Noise’ Contacts Some Pretty Scary Ghosts
In anticipation of revisiting Geoffrey Sax’s White Noise (written by Niall Johnson) for the film’s 20th anniversary this January, I did a cursory Google search to better understand the film’s reception at the time of release. I was in elementary school in 2005, and while White Noise scared the crud out of me then, I figured the broader critical reception was less than kind. The top result was a screed, decrying White Noise as the worst of the early aughts’ horror impulses. Cheap. Digital. Ugly. Loud. And convoluted.
I’d push back—2000s horror is among the best. But otherwise, that denouncement was a common sentiment. White Noise was allegedly cynical, a bottom-barrel spook show capitalizing on an A-list star and easily marketed concept. 20 years later, yeah, White Noise is at times those things. Yet, it’s aged gracefully, and in retrospect, it’s one of the more unconventional (and still assuredly scary) studio horror movies from the decade.
White Noise centers itself around the real, yet hotly debated, electronic voice phenomena. The idea is that electronic devices can capture voices from the other side—that is, ghosts, spirits, demons, a whole lot of otherworldly things. The late 1990s and early 2000s were rife with parapsychology. It was the decade of Ghost Hunters (2004), Dead Famous: Ghostly Encounters (2004), and Long Island Medium (2011). The public writ large was certifiably obsessed with the dead and how to contact them. But, as Stephen King wrote in Pet Sematary, sometimes “dead is better.”
The horror scene pre-White Noise was already full of analog and digital takes on millennium technology and their supernatural implications. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse had spirits crawling from computers, Hideo Nakata’s Ringu had spirits tethered to VHS tapes, and Takashi Miike’s One Missed Call saw the dead ringing their living selves in foreboding fashion. Those are notably all J-horror films, and while the United States produced its fair share of remakes, White Noise is conceptually J-horror, though distinctly American.
Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) is a rich architect living in a stellar only-in-the-movies house. His kid is cute, he gets on amicably with his ex (his son’s mother), and in the opening scene, he really shows how profoundly in love he is with his new wife, Anna (Chandra West). Tell me if you’ve seen this before: Jonathan embraces Anna from behind, and she cheekily brushes his advances off since she’s already running late.
Oh, and she’s pregnant. Anna announces the results in a radiantly lit McMansion bathroom, and Jonathan couldn’t be happier. White Noise is a horror movie, though, so it’s all ham-fisted set-up for an inevitable tragedy. The inevitable tragedy strikes in the form of Anna going missing for several weeks. Jonathan, in the throes of despair, is contacted by Raymond Price (Ian McNeice), an EVP expert who shares that Anna is dead and has been communicating with him. No way. Then Anna’s body is found. Yes way?
Jonathan throws himself headfirst into the world of EVP alongside Raymond and grieving widow Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger, always welcome). Jonathan is able to hear Anna, but in doing so, he also invites angrier, nastier voices with much more sinister intentions. At its core, White Noise is principally another variant of the children shouldn’t play with dead things brand of horror. Jonathan enmeshes himself in a world he doesn’t fully understand and pays dearly for it.
Those consequences are what set White Noise apart. Despite the PG-13 rating, White Noise is pretty mean. Random audio bursts of static or disembodied voices are certain to send you flying out of your seat. While it might appear cheap, it’s organic to the world Geoffrey Sax is slowly putting together. Like Pulse, White Noise is a society on the brink. The barrier between the living and the dead has never been thinner, and it’s our collective fault. Jonathan spiraling in a room full of television sets after having previously abandoned his son speaks to more than his desperation—it’s his indifference toward the modern world.
The film’s cynicism is complicated by dense mythology, especially a third-act serial killer and a trio of tangible demons. But it matters little when White Noise goes full slasher mode, killing off main characters and bit players with ease. I’d remembered White Noise being more patient and quieter, a lot like Pulse, one of its clear inspirations. It is, at least at first. But then it ends without any redemption for its protagonist. Jonathan is viciously tortured and killed by the demons he’s contacted. They twist his arms, shatter his legs, and throw him to his death.
What was the point of it all? Maybe nothing. White Noise certainly doesn’t probe as much as its J-horror counterparts, but it is compellingly bleak. The world is a nasty, cruel place, and we’re all complicit. Dead or alive, it doesn’t make much of a difference.
White Noise ends with an intertitle that reads, “Of the many thousands of documented EVP messages, approximately 1 in 12 have been overtly threatening in nature.” I don’t know if that’s true, but the Edison quote on our personalities enduring after death is true, speaking to our longstanding fascination with the dead and contacting them in the world of the living. Why do we need to do it? White Noise doesn’t have an answer for that, though it does assure audiences they’re in for a nasty, gnarly time if they try.
As a distinctly 2000s window into parapsychology, White Noise is better than the sum of its parts. It feels very 2005, Michael Keaton is alive in some scenes (and catatonic in others), and the jolts, while effective, are regularly just loud noises out of nowhere. Yet, as an artifact for the end of a supernatural era, White Noise is not only pretty damn scary, but pretty damn bleak, too. The ghost in this machine goes hella hard. While I’m not certain is has anything profound to say, it did leave me feeling just a little bit empty. Horror that makes you feel something? That’s worth getting in touch with.
Categorized:Editorials
