Low Budget

White Noise

Reviewers aren’t taken with this movie, yet it is doing well with the public. Quite well. One reason it gets trashed, in all probability, is the association with The Ring and others that have followed in that strain. It’s no Ring, but definitely better than The Grudge Good horror is, as the stylish. But bad horror can still be very good if it gets underneath our skin. To do that, it has to get into a level that we recognize as possible.

White Noise listens to static for voices. We’ve probably all done that, searching for a good radio station and crossing through something that we seem to recognize. A voice, a phrase. Our mind doesn’t catch it, not really, but we paint the rest in. If you stare at white noise long enough, you will see things. Possibly, you’ll freak yourself out.

This movie could be a man freaking himself out, crossing that line between real and not so much. The on-screen story, the fibula being told by the writers doesn’t make much sense. It certainly isn’t very deep. But the fear is. Planes of reality don’t seem fixed in the story, and electronic media are certainly magic, already.

It isn’t clever like Sixth Sense, eerie like The Ring, it doesn’t have the constant tension of either of those movies. But White Noise will probably do quite well, just because parts of it feel authentic. Of course any knowledge of technology or cognitive psychology will punch holes in the realism, but the effect still persists.

posted by dan @ 1/12/2005 01:06:00 PM