White Noise: Critic Reviews

Keaton gives an understated performance that reminds you how it was that he became such an appealing screen presence in the first place and makes you wish better material would start coming his way rather than goofy messages from the great beyond.

In lieu of satisfying answers, we get crude gee-whizzikers scares, cribbed from the horror canon.

The nominal thriller White Noise is worthy neither of Michael Keaton's talents nor even a desperate horror fan's attention.

White Noise pretty much describes the content of this lackluster, scare-free story.

Although director Geoffrey Sax gives White Noise its share of suspense, he's hampered by Niall Johnson's script, which is often confusing, muddy and ultimately cliche-ridden.

A moronic exercise in supernatural claptrap.

Vigorously pushes the supernatural line throughout, but unfortunately its final movement is so incoherent that the whole thing collapses.

Less likely to haunt an audience than simply bore them to death.

[A] dullsville chiller.

[The movie's] intentions are well-meaning but director Geoffrey Sax's execution is so uneven it nulls their impact.

A disappointing show.

The movie itself plays like a message from the dead, a communique from some inert movie world of lifeless cliches, emptily flashy style, wooden characters and moribund plot shtick.

Though I'm well disposed toward elliptical spook stories that depend on the audience's imagination for their jolts and effects, it takes art as well as craft to put them across, and Geoffrey Sax's direction of a Niall Johnson script has neither.

Has a relatively quiet pulse for a spooky, supernatural thriller.

Flawed but enjoyable supernatural thriller.

About as much fun as watching static on TV.

You know a ghost story is in trouble when the leading man's wrinkles and scars are more intriguing than any of the on-screen spooks.

Too silly to describe, much less analyze.

An unsatisfying supernatural thriller with an effectively unsettling build-up and a frustratingly muddled pay-off.

Silly and unscary.

Poltergeist (1982) did it first and did it better. But this new stroll through cinematic static is still a sometimes spooky spin on that theme.

When it falters, it does so for the same reason certain otherwise perfectly unnerving recent horror movies have -- because the atmosphere of irrational dread is punctured by the demand for a rational explanation.

Around the two-thirds mark, this restless bum had an urge to move considerably farther than the seat's edge.

Even if its dorky climax throws you out of the mood again, there are staticky bits of White Noise that still manage to cling.

There's no horror to speak of.