"This is one of those genres - ironically, along with family films
- that has done consistently strong business, especially for the
last six months," Dergarabedian says. "Films like The Grudge,
Resident Evil, Seed of Chucky, Saw, White Noise, Hide and Seek -
seemingly every one out of the gate is performing. These are not
films looking for good reviews. In fact, it's rare that you see one
with a good review. This is a genre, and people just wanna be
scared, freaked out, whatever. It's a mainstay of cinema to have
movies that thrill and enthrall the audience."
But for an
actor like
Michael Keaton, who'd never made a
creepy-crawly till signing on to do this year's White Noise, the
appeal transcends cheap thrills or easy scares. After all, he says,
scary movies never scared him, save for The Exorcist or Roman
Polanski's Rosemary's Baby: "Bring 'em on, I'll kick their
[butt]," he says. "I don't mean that literally, but movies don't
scare me." The self-proclaimed "scarily choosy" actor signed on to
White Noise, based on the real-world theory of Electronic Voice
Phenomena in which the dead allegedly reach out from the beyond
using untuned radios and TV sets, because, he says, who wouldn't
want to talk to a dead wife or father or son if given the chance?
It's about heart, he insists, not merely the racing heartbeat.
"I haven't seen all the movies in this genre - and it seems like
there's one every other week - but I've seen enough and know what
they're about," says Keaton, who plays an architect whose wife dies
in an apparent accident and begins speaking to him through a
television's static. "The thing I thought that was interesting
about White Noise was how it goes from, here's a guy who's in the
prime part of his life, who's happy and has found a woman he loves
and they're gonna have another baby and business is great, and when
it goes you feel like it's all lost. Now you're with a guy who, I
chose to believe, was a nonbeliever, a cynic, and is now in a
really vulnerable spot … . That kinda scared me, and I thought it
had the potential to pop. It was like when I first saw Batman. I
said, 'Wow, this really works, or I'll look really bad in the
suit.' "