White Noise is coming to Netflix this weekend, an 80s-era film that comes with a star-studded cast and promises dread, fear, and laughter. And while the acting is great, and the set styling will bring back major nostalgia – the movie fails to deliver a story that will keep audiences engaged or want to watch the movie again.
The movie follows College professor Jack Gladney and his family after a nearby chemical leak causes “The Airborne Toxic Event,” leading them into evacuation. After the Event is considered over, the family returns home – but nothing is normal. Although, it seems not normal is something that is the only thing normal about this family. The movie follows them through affairs, drug addiction, job issues, and more. It seems this “average” family is anything but and the issues are beyond the scope that normal families would deal with.
The most interesting part of the whole movie is the Event, and the evacuation and dread it causes. This, however, only lasts about 20 minutes in the whole scope of the movie, and the rest of the audience is just dragged through other bizarre situations. It seems the story could have focused more on the event, the fallout, and what it actually meant to their lives instead of just soldiering on through the drudges of day-to-day life. It is a big missed opportunity for the storyline, but instead, the movie focuses on the mundane.
White Noise doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be – a thriller, a drama, or just a story of a messed-up family. It leaves viewers with this feeling of dissatisfaction since it seemed to have so much potential going into it. The initial dread created by the Event is just brushed off and you’re left watching a dysfunctional mess play out on the screen. It seems to lose direction and just wander along hoping to find itself again, and never truly does.
White Noise is streaming on Netflix this weekend.
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About White Noise:
At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic, White Noise dramatizes a contemporary American family’s attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world.
