White Noise: Unraveling the Mystery of the EVP Phenomenon
Remember the trailer for "White Noise"? It had a few EVP recordings, which were terrifying. For those of you who don’t know, EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. Presumably, dead people hang out, and although there have been rumors of ghosts appearing on video and in photographs, the idea behind EVPs is that if the ghosts have energy to appear on film, they have the ability to be heard.
So people will hang out with tape recorders, recording background noise or static, a.k.a. white noise, and when the tape is listened to later, you might be able to hear ghosts talking.
Visual representation of an EVP spectrum analysis.
The Premise
Our film shows a loving couple, Michael Keaton being half of that couple, while his female counterpart confesses she is pregnant. Sadly, she is found dead shortly thereafter. Her wounds supposedly due to slipping and falling off of a cliff. Michael is then visited by someone who claims his wife has been talking through video/audio recordings, so Michael Keaton goes to his house.
He hears and sees enough to believe the guy, and he gets obsessed with EVPs and attempting to contact his wife. He starts following clues he appears to be seeing and hearing in the “white noise”, which first result in him saving a baby from a car accident.
The Plot Thickens
After further clues and supposed messages from ghosts, he ends up rescuing a woman who has been kidnapped. We then realize the woman was being held captive by the same people who killed Michael Keaton’s wife! And that person was apparently following the orders of shadow people? Whatever.
Either way, Michael Keaton manages to interfere and save the woman, but he ends up dying in the process. But it’s cool, because we get a final message at the end that shows him with his wife!
The Downside of High Production Value
First of all, hearing EVPs is terrifying, have I mentioned that? With all the Ghost Hunters I watch, it’s never any less creepy. Unfortunately, the reason they are so scary is the fact that you can never quite make them out clearly, and you never know if you’re hearing what you think you’re hearing.
So the fact that this is a bigger budget production, you already know that the thing that’s supposed to scare you, and the thing the movie is named after, is going to be the least scary thing. This was made after The Blair Witch Project, yet if it was filmed in a similar style, it might have worked. Sadly, this film did not.
Final Thoughts
There were a few jump scares, but that’s about it. I guess the shadow people were kind of creepy? But still, the scariest part is the fact that we don’t get to see Michael Keaton in as many movies as we used to.
A scene from the movie "White Noise".