It is one thing to contact the dead; it is another thing to meddle in their world. This is the advice architect Jonathan Rivers receives when he visits a psychic.

Jonathan (Michael Keaton) is grieving over the death of his pregnant wife Anna (Chandra West). Police concluded she was changing a tire on her car when she slipped on an embankment, cracking her skull and breaking an arm.

Weeks later, her body washed up near an abandoned warehouse.

Shortly after Anna's disappearance, Jonathan is visited by Raymond Price (Ian McNeice) a pudgy little man claiming to have spoken with Anna through electronic voice phenomenon (EVP).

It takes time before Jonathan accepts the theory that the dead try to contact the living through electronic static. Then he becomes not just a convert, but a fanatic.

He turns his home into a laboratory of static receptors and begins to hear voices and see images.

It's at that point the psychic explains to Jonathan that EVP is a modern equivalent of the ouija board. Play with it and you could contact malevolent, as well as benevolent, spirits.

Without this possibility, White Noise would be little more than a documentary about the phenomenon of EVP, which has gained prominence these last two decades.

The clever trailers for White Noise give few clues as to where the film's plot will take Jonathan and reviews should do the same.

The less you know going into White Noise, the creepier it is because it will keep you as off guard as it does poor Jonathan.

The trailers for White Noise immediately recall the little girl in Poltergeist staring at the static on the TV exclaiming: 'They're here.'

White Noise is nowhere near as scary as Poltergeist, but it's right up there with Kevin Costner's Dragonfly and Julianne Moore's The Forgotten.

The first 40 minutes of the movie are filled with true white knuckle moments.

It's to his credit that director Geoffrey Sax can build such chilling suspense with just some flickering static on a TV, radio or answering machine.

There's a particularly effective moment when Jonathan gets a call from his dead wife's cellphone.

Keaton makes for a credible protagonist, taking Jonathan from the joy in his marriage to the pain and sorrow over his wife's loss.

His conversion to psychic phenomenon is cautious but his obsession is fierce enough to make his subsequent action believable.

White Noise is not the kind of thriller that makes you scream and leap about in your seat, but it will likely have you squirming and gasping.

It is so convincing, especially at the beginning, that the next time you receive static on a TV, radio or phone, it will probably be a little unnerving.

(This film is rated 14-A)
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