White Noise review

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EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomena - is the shaky hook on which British director Geoffrey Sax hangs his limp chiller, a tired clump of hokum in which the dead contact the living through radio and television waves. Michael Keaton is the bereaved widower certain that his late wife has something to impart to him, a conviction which causes him to spend every waking hour watching recorded static. Well, anything's better than Channel Five.

In fact, so eager is our hero to share a few more minutes with the missus that he completely ignores the danger signs - a stiff here, a trashed flat there, the kindly stranger (Deborah Kara Unger) who hurls herself off a balcony. Lifting freely from Frequency, The Dead Zone and the recent slew of Japanese horrors, writer Niall Johnson (The Big Swap) keeps things nice and spooky in the early going before surrendering to ludicrous plot contrivance and overcooked effects. Static's the right word for it

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