White Light

I'd heard of White Noise (2005) as the movie that set off the EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) fad. It stars Michael Keaton, so why not give it a try.

Keaton is a wealthy architect with a best-selling author for a second wife and a young boy by his first. Which do you think will die? Well, it's the wife, Chandra West. He's pretty broken up abut it, but when a strange man comes to his house to say he thinks he has been contacted by the wife, he is not receptive.

But he changes his mind when he thinks he hears West on a tape the guy gives him. He's soon deep into the whole EVP thing. He meets Deborah Kara Unger through this obsession. Then the first EVP guy turns up dead, and demonic presences make themselves known.

Soon, Keaton gets messages from people not yet dead. In particular, one is a kidnapped young woman. The last part of the movie is rave against time to find her from clues in the EVP before she's done in by the demon-possessed madman who has taken her. 

SPOILER - He is killed in the final fight, but the police arrive in time to rescue the girl. After the funeral, Unger and his son here his voice in the static on the radio. The son, who isn't really a character, smiles.

This is a fairly ramshackle movie. People show up and die, or just move on. The son barely seems to notice that his mother is dead - I'm not even sure she is his step-mother. The rules of EVP seem pretty flexible. They can come from the dead, the near dead, or even the threatened, I guess. Also, sometimes from demons? 

Ms. Spenser was not impressed particularly. It isn't even very scary.