Geoffrey Sax
12 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
It doesn't help that the film has a severe case of Ring envy; in fact, seeing it drove me to watch Gore Verbinski's film again, which only demonstrated how much White Noise wanted to be The Ring and how pathetically it failed.
These kinds of films stink up the multiplex, and "White Noise," the first release of the year, blasts out of the 2005 starting gate with an odorous eeeewwww, to be followed quickly by "Racing Stripes" and "Are We There Yet?" Treading on such familiar ground as "Frequency," "Ghost," "The Ring," "Poltergeist" and a host of other more enjoyable supernatural thrillers of years past, British tv director Geoffrey Sax and writer Niall Johnson sink this Canadian-U.K. co-production quicker than you can say EVPâElectronic Voice Phenomenonâan alternative long distance service hyped in this film (and by numerous paranormal authorities) that allows communication between the living and the dead.
He also wraps the entire package in a kind of inhuman video twitch, perfected by David Fincher in Seven (1995) and most recently adapted in Gore Verbinski's remake of The Ring.
After "The Ring" petrified audiences in 2002, producers from Hollywood to Hong Kong were apparently convinced that electronic devices are downright horrifying.
Why, back in aught-two, the VHS phantom girl from "The Ring," mean as she was, at least had the common decency to stop, pick up the phone and place a courtesy call before moving in for the kill.
The Ring worked much better for this sort of thing.
Sax clearly wants the movie to work on the level of such classic ghost movies as the original 1963 version of "The Haunting" -- films in which the horror is brilliantly suggested by the imagery and situations and takes place in the mind of the audience.
The movie's last act that's the 10 percent that is bad enough to be funny looks and plays more like a bad copy of William Malone's style-over-substance Ring rip-off, FearDotCom.
Often playing like an unwanted sequel to Dragonfly, a Kevin Costner flop from a few years ago also released by Universal, White Noise makes little sense and has the annoying habit of depending on loud, jolting sound effects in a desperate attempt to produce scares.
But like the dreadful 2002 Dragonfly , in which a man is sent on a rescue mission directed by communications from his dead wife, White Noise takes a sudden shift as Jonathan's wife guides him to hunt down a serial killer.
Just as he displayed in 2006's " Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker ," Pettyfer brings a life to his character of John Smith that approximately resembles that of a sawed-off tree stump.
One assumes a gifted comedian like Keaton might be able to inject a little spunkiness into the proceedings (just look what the kooky Johnny Depp did for "Secret Window"), but Keaton approaches the role like "Death of a Salesman."
Michael Keaton once proved himself a wonderfully versatile actor, capable of comedy ("Beetlejuice"), dark drama ("Batman," "Clean and Sober"), and even Shakespeare ("Much Ado About Nothing").
In this case we have a hero, Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton), who becomes obsessed with listening to the spirit of his late wife, Anna (Chandra West, The Salton Sea), as she natters away in recordings of "white noise" taken from untuned TV sets.
Michael Keaton stars as Jonathan Rivers, a successful architect who loses his second wife, the gorgeous and successful author Anna Rivers (Chandra West, "The Salton Sea" ), to a terrible accident.
Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton, "First Daughter") has only just learned that his second wife Anna (Chandra West, "The Salton Sea"), a successful author about to publish her latest book, is expecting their first child when she doesn't return home one night after meeting a girlfriend.
"White Noise" does seem to have a nice look and feel, courtesy of cinematographer Chris Seager ("Cold Comfort Farm") and production designer Michael S. Bolton, who eventually drain the film's early warm color styling as Keaton's character spirals deeper into his obsessed and confused state.
Events force Keaton to become a proactive seer, rushing to the scene of some mishap or crime, like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable.
Contemporary horror has increasingly exploited our ever-growing addiction to digital video, from the found footage genre (launched, arguably, by The Blair Witch Project , along with the Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity franchises, Trollhunter , and others) to stories of technology gone haywire in supernatural ways ( Videodrome , V/H/S , White Noise ).
Only by the final third do they remember that the film is also supposed to be a thriller, and Keaton suddenly receives ominous visual messages that reveal that the dead apparently speak in the language of movie one-sheet iconography: shadowy walking figures ( Dawn of the Dead ); a silhouetted profile of a man's face ( Mission: Impossible ); a frightened, ghostly looking-figure screaming with their hands reaching out ( The Relic ).