Isn't it funny that you can see commercial after commercial for a movie on TV, and each one make said movie look better? It builds you up and up until you're nearly wetting yourself with anticipation to see it.  Then you finally do, and the movie turns out to be so bad you want to piss on the theater seats in outrage.  White Noise is one of these movies.  However, there was one clue given away by the hype that I ignored that should've told me this movie was going to be utter shite: Michael Keaton is the main actor in the movie.  Even the opening credits are annoying.  Between names in the credits, the producers decided to splice in clips of random stock footage and loud, obnoxious white noise. You know, in case you forgot what movie you're watching.  Then we see Mr. Mom himself, his annoying writer wife, and the annoying little bastard kid from his first marriage.  Then we hear about a lot of character bullshit that serves but one purpose.  If you are a character in a shitty movie, here's how to tell if you're going to die right away:

1. Another character tells you that "you look great".
2. You're pregnant.
3. You're a writer and are releasing your best novel e-v-e-r.
4. You drive your step-kid around when the deadbeat mother is too lazy to pick the little bastard up.
5. Your husband buys you flowers and chocolates because he's swell.
6. You're going out after work for drinks with an annoying friend.
7. You drive a VW Beetle convertible.
8. You're married to Mr. Mom.

So yeah, right away, Keaton's wife dies.  She was changing a tire right next to a river and fell in and drowned.  She dies at 2:30 AM, because that's when his clock stops and the radio turns on and starts screaming at him.  Then it takes people three weeks to find the body, and they find it by accident.  Foolish police officers.

After that, nothing really happens for a while.  There's a funeral, and Keaton's ex-wife and new husband are there "comforting" him.  Because they're all the bestest of friends now.  Hooray for happy!  Anyway, this really fat guy is sitting out front of Keaton's house in his truck staring at him.  Suspicion has been aroused.  While Keaton's at work designing buildings, this tubby bitch is outside his office again, eating and reading the paper on a bus-stop bench.  Keaton goes out to yell at him, and this guy (I forget his name, but it doesn't matter) tells him that his wife contacted him through EVP's and gives Keaton his card.

Now we jump to six months later.  Keaton moves into an apartment I'm assuming he designed to "start over again."  Whatever, chump.  He goes to work and starts riding an elevator in this building under construction that I'm assuming he designed also, and there's a client with him.  The elevator mysteriously stops, the power goes out, and the business client of course starts bitching about money.  During this nonsense, Mr. Mom gets a call on his cell phone from - dun dun dun duunnnnnnn - his dead wife's cell phone.  It's also 2:30 in the afternoon.  This freaks him out and the power magically goes back on. Then the elevator doors open and some goofy construction worker is there saying, "Are you guys ok?" Remember this guy, because even though no one mentions him and we never see him again, he'll be a crucial person in the last five minutes of the movie for some random reason.

Keaton goes home, his dead wife calls him again, and this time he answers.  It's his dead wife's disembodied voice saying his name.  I'm pretty sure it's 2:30 in the morning at this point.  Notice a pattern?  Keaton calls up the fat bastard to find out what's going on, and then they meet up so Keaton can hear his dead wife talk to him.  This bitch named Susan is there, crying of course, and she looks like Dharma.  I hate Dharma and Greg.  Worst fucking show ever.  Anyway, she's been talking to her dead fiance.  Fatty shows Keaton the files of his dead wife talking, and then the speakers start screaming, "Bastard!  Pig!  She's ours!  Go away!" and other such nonsense as three figures kind of appear behind him for a second.  Then fatty says, "These are bad spirits, to get them to go away, just delete them.  I want a glass of gravy!" 

At this point, Keaton starts going nuts with the whole EVP thing, buys a shit load of TV's and recording equipment, and starts trying to find his dead wife.  Throughout this montage of recording static, we get to see the wide range of emotions the talented Michael Keaton has.  Here he is looking intense:

Here he is looking contemplative:

And here he is looking... um- I guess he's intense again:

Wow, all of those faces look completely different.  He's such a good actor.  Being Beetlejuice must've fried the "good acting" portion of his brain.  Anyway, Fatty calls him up and says he got some crazy ass audio from his dead wife, so he ruches over there.  When he gets there, fatty's dead and all of his equipment is trashed.  The plot thickens.

He starts doing this more and more, and his wife starts screaming at him to "Go NOW, John, GO NOW!  RARRRR!" And then he sees some dead woman smack against the screen all bloody-like, and then we see, once again, three silhouettes.  I never get sick of that shocking image.  Wow.

At some point he goes to see a blind psychic lady who keeps telling him about "Willow Street" and then she flips out because she sees screaming static-y TV people. She yells at him for doing the EVP thing, tells him to stop meddling, and then again tells him to go to Willow street and that his wife was pregnant.  He leaves because he's an asshole.

So he goes to Willow Street and finds an overturned car underneath a power line and a transformer with sparks all over the place.  As he runs over there, three shadows fly past him the other way.  He gets there, and a bloody woman starts pounding on the window screaming "SAVE MY BABY!!!!  SHE'S DELICIOUS!!!" and looks like the woman he saw in his TV screen.  Unfortunately for the people that love dead babies, Beetlejuice saves the baby and lets the woman die.  Then he goes to her funeral with Susan and the husband says, I swear to Jebus, "Thanks for saving my kid, but stay the fuck away from my family.  My wife was into this psychic shit, but not me!"  Then I'm pretty sure he leaves to eat his baby.  Keaton hears another woman talking to him, his wife says "John go now," and he tracks the woman's grand-daughter down and tells her about it.  The girl says that her grandmom died two days ago, but wait- wait, crying girl!  Keaton's been talking to your dead grandmom for a week now!  How's that possible?!?!  Oh NO!

Keaton goes to Susan's bookstore to go through fatty's records because she was cataloging them for some reason.  They start going through names, and they realize that Keaton's seeing people that aren't dead yet because his wife's trying to get him to be a hero.  THAT'S JUST LIKE BATMAN, WOOO!  Then, he finds the names of the woman in the car and the dead grandmom in fatty's list of clients.  My god.  He also found the name of a woman that's been missing for a few days and is all over the news.

The two of them go back to Keaton's place to watch static, and they see the kidnapped woman along with his wife saying, "JOHN GO NOW RARRR NOW NOW!"  Then, we see the three figures for the 18th time, and they start screaming at them, and then, oh yes, Susan sees herself on the TV saying, "It hurts" and she's all bloody and junk.  This freaks her out and she starts crying.

At this point, I'd like to apologize if it seems like I'm jumping around and leaving big holes in the plot and nothing really makes sense.  I assure you that this is what happens in the movie.  It's like there are huge, crutial scenes that the editor chopped out after sniffing way too much glue. Seriously, at this point in watching the movie, you kind of know what's going on, but you're not sure how you got there and are starting to care less and less.

Keaton goes to Susan's house to watch her while she's sleeping.  She's scared and doesn't want to be alone.  At 2:30 AM, Keaton gets up to go to the bathroom.  For some stupid fucking reason, he has to prop the bedroom door open so it doesn't close and lock behind him.  Just like everyone's bedroom door.  While he's in the can, the lights start flickering, three shadows run by, and the bedroom door slams.  Keaton breaks in, sees that Susan's not in be, and sees her on her balcony railing.  Then she does a backwards swan dive onto an awning below. Somehow she's not dead.

He goes to the hospital with her, and this detective's interviewing him.  It's the same detective that was there when his wife was killed.  It's the same detective that was there after he saved the baby.  It's the same fucking detective that showed up when Keaton found fatty dead.  If this were real life, the detective would probably arrest Keaton for killing lots of people. Seriously, you'd think someone would find it odd that he keeps popping up at all of these crime scenes.  But no, he just wants a statement.  Fucking retard.  Keaton tells him to stop by later.  He goes in to see Susan, and she says "It hurts" just like on the TV.  Wow.  Full circle. Anyway, Keaton goes home, all his equipment is trashed, and there is many a hole in his window.  Then his one TV turns on, he see the letters "EP OU" again, and if anyone hasn't figured out that this means "KEEP OUT" by now, then you're fucking retarded and should stick to watching Land Before Time movies.  HE also sees a picture of a factory, the very same factory where they found his dead wife in the water.  So he goes there and sees the KEEP OUT sign.  Hooray.

The detective goes into Keaton's apartment, sees everything trashed, and then three shadows walk by. Meanwhile, Keaton ignored the Keep Out sign, and the screams of his wife saying "GO NOW!!!!" and goes into the factory with a mysterious flickering light.  He calls the detective guy to meet him there because he's certain this is where the kidnapped lady is.  He goes up the steps, finds a static TV setup just like the one he has, and hears screaming upstairs.  He goes up there and sees his dead wife's image on the ceiling, once again telling him to "go now."  It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this whole time she wasn't telling him to help people but to stop doing EVP's and to GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE FUCKING BUILDING.  Retard.

He goes up the steps anyway and finds the kidnapped woman tied up.  Also, the guy that did it is THE CONSTRUCTION WORKER FROM THE BUILDING KEATON WAS DESIGNING WHEN THE ELEVATOR STOPPED.  We haven't seen this asshole in over an hour, and when we did see him, he was on screen for literally two second, had one line, and was NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.  That's not a twist, assholes; it's fucking stupid!  So this goober says "Hi John.  They told me to do it.  I always do what they say."  Keaton looks up, sees the three figures way up above, and finally we realize why we haven't seen anything but their shadows up until this point: it's because when they swoop down and absolutely destroy the shit out of Keaton, they look worse than the tooth fairy looked at the end of Darkness Falls.  They're animated really terribly, they look stupid, they make annoying noises, and all they are is random "evil spirits".  They break all of Keaton's bones, and every time they hit him, the same thing is happening to Susan.  Apparently they have some sort of random psychic bond that people only get when one of them jumps out of a window. After Keaton has his shit ruined, the crazy construction guy goes to stab the kidnapped girl when the detective and the swat team bust in and shoot him.  Then the detective looks down this hole and sees a very dead Batman.

Then we're at Keaton's funeral, and his ex-wife, kid, and her husband are there crying and shit.  Susan's also there in a wheelchair, I think to represent how her psychic bond with Keaton is turning her into a robot.  Anyway, his ex and kid and her husband get into their minivan, and the clock radio says it's 2:29.  I think you can see where this is going.  As soon as the motherfucker turns to 2:30. the radio starts tuning by itself to a non-existent station, and we hear Mr. Mom say "I'm sorry, Mikey." Oh yeah, Mikey's his kid's name.  Then his ex-wife starts crying and they drive away.  As they drive away, Susan starts rolling after them as if to say "NO!  WAIT FOR MEEEEEE!"  But they leave her behind.  Then she looks around all crazy-like, sees a bunch of shadows move around, and she looks to the left real quick while the soundtrack makes this "BAMMM" noise.  The end.  Oh, and there's a blurb about how, out of the hundreds of thousands of EVP's recorded, only 1 in 12 are hostile.  Wow, only 1 in 12, you say?  I like those odds.  I think I'll play some Russian Roulette after recording some EVP's.  Yeah.

So that's the movie.  Yes, it sucked.  It jumped around constantly, and even though 95% of the characters (dead or otherwise) and plot devices in the movie (like big fucking KEEP OUT signs) told him to let it go, Keaton's dumb fucking ass ignored it and got himself perished by three evil shadows that liked to collect the souls of mainly women and some men that were into EVP's. Then, the guy helping the ghost-things was some random half-character with one line that no one remembered. Whoever is responsible for this garbage was hoping that we'd all be like "No!  Not the construction worker!  Wow, didn't see that coming!  This..  this movie's FANTASTIC! BRAVO!!"  Fuck that, it was stupid.  The only thing shocking about that "twist" is how fucking lame it was. Plus, what was up with the three evil spirits?  Were they dead people too?  Were they the ghosts of Keaton's clones from Multiplicity?  WHAT THE FUCK?!?!  Seriously, the only saving grace of the movie is that they didn't get Andie McDowell to play the hot chick.  Not that the Dharma-looking woman that played Susan was that good looking or anything, but she's not the woman from Multiplicity and that's good enough for me.  Sort of.