White Noise

Not bad advice. But let’s check out some other movies to probably stay away from. THE AMITYVILLE HORROR—Ok, I’m one of the few horror fans who hasn’t seen the original of this schlock-fest of a series, so I guess I’m going to have to finally bite the bullet and see it. What I’m not too sure about is this remake. Ryan Reynolds (didn’t even notice that it was him) and Melissa George (who?) move into a house where a whole family was killed back in 1974. Now he’s going crazy. And audiences are going with him. This will probably be horrible, but I’m sure I’ll see it at some point.

BOOGEYMAN—Hmmm. I’ll definitely wait for video on this one. A bunch of nameless faces show up to help another nameless face get over his fear of closets and find out what happened to his mom who disappeared when he was a kid. Looks like crap. In fact, my viewing buddy said that this looked just like Darkness Falls. So that makes it used crap. That’s disgusting.

On to the horror of the moment.

Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton in his first real role since 1998’s Jack Frost—I don’t count First Daughter because I bet he doesn’t, either) is a haunted man. Literally. His wife (the beautiful Chandra West) just died in what seems like a tragic accident. Now he’s going to a man (Ian McNeice) who is being contacted by the dead via white noise on tvs and radios. Sometimes he only hears them, but eventually he usually sees them in the fuzz on the tv.

But why would someone want this man dead? And who is chasing Jonathan and his new love interest, Sara (Deborah Kara Unger) around? And will Jon ever hang out with his little son, Mikey, again?

The big question, though, is does anyone, alive or dead, really care? What we have here is about two thirds of an almost decent movie. The first part, where Jon’s dead wife and others are just contacting him, is kind of creepy. As soon as it becomes the search for a missing woman that involves three ghosts it gets REALLY hokey. And the final confrontation is painful, but laughable. And that’s not good in a horror movie.

I love Michael Keaton. I’ll watch that guy in just about anything. I think he’s totally under-rated as an actor and needs to work more. He’s no Olivier or anything, but he’s really cool and he’s got some pretty good range. But he’s WAY out of practice. There were times that he just made some really weird choices. While he thinks that his wife is still alive (she disappears for a while) he doesn’t seem too disturbed by it. When her body is found is when he finally seems like something happened. And then there’s a scene near the end where he’s trying to decide whether he should go into an abandoned warehouse. (NNNNOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! Don’t EVER go into an abandoned warehouse! Not even in a comedy!) From the look on his face and the noises he makes it looks like the decision is making him knock his knee against a table. I have no idea what was going on there. Not such a great performance from the former Mr. Batman. I hope he does better next time.

Everyone else is passable, if not great. I think the little boy is probably the best actor in the whole movie. (And, yeah, the final scene did get to me. It was totally expected, but still sweet and blah, blah, blah.)

Director Geoffrey Sax (who used to direct puppets in the Spitting Image series in England) is kind of out of his league here, I think. There are creepy scenes, but they’re not disturbing like they should have been. Since Electronic Voice Phenomenon is such a creepy thing to me I should have been crawling out of the theatre with my face looking directly at the floor so as to not see any ghosts anywhere. Instead, I’ve forgotten all of the creepy images. There were WAY too many jump scares that were just kind of dumb. (The sound is way down until a truck pulls out in front of Jon…and he’s at a stop sign, so he’s not even in any danger. AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!)

I really wish that this movie had been better. It had a LOT of potential to scare the shit out of me and it really did nothing for me. It was better than I expected, but that’s not saying much. I had heard that it was completely irredeemable and not worth a minute of my time. Well, it was worth about an hour of my time. Too bad it was over an hour and a half.