Very Bad Reception

White Noise

This morose little psychodrama starring the increasingly craggy Michael Keaton plays with your head for ninety minutes and then drop-kicks it out the door. I’m not sure what’s more painful; watching this bore fest unfold or having to write about it.

The silly premise of “White Noise” is that dead people can communicate through modern electronics, kind of like that scene in “Poltergeist” when the little girl turns away from the hissing blank TV screen and announces, “They’re here!” Where that movie had great special effects and an entertaining script, this latest entry into Paranormalville has neither.

Half of the story has Keaton sitting in front of TV screens waiting for something, anything to happen. The audience does likewise. I wanted to shout, “Turn the channel!” but I don’t think he would have gotten the message. He certainly didn’t have a clue when he signed on to this tired project.

There’s a montage in the middle of the film where Keaton is, that’s right, sitting in front of his TV’s and he goes off. He shouts and grimaces like a maniac because he’s been staring at the same blank screen for days. I felt his pain. It seemed to me he had realized what a turkey he was trapped in and wanted out. Sorry Michael, you’ve got about 40 more minutes to make this work.

The story trails off, in boardroom fashion, down a bunch of clichéd alleys. A psycho killer is revealed and some shadowy figures keep creeping by. A woman who shares Keaton’s penchant for spooky messages and space fuzz jumps off a balcony when she sees herself in TV Hell.

It’s all a goofy mess that adds up to total frustration for the viewer. Why are dead people whispering inanities over bad reception? Who are the shadow people and what do they want? What was the director thinking when he yelled, “Action!”? Where was the movie heading besides the close-out bin? When will I be able to erase the image of Michael Keaton’s serious actor face from my mind?

There are no answers to these questions. And although there are said to be no stupid questions, there are indeed stupid movies. This is definitely one of them.