The successful architect, Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton), seems to have it all, as he also finds out that he is about to get another addition to his family.  His stunning second wife Anna (Chandra West) is a prominent author with several best sellers and has just discovered that she is pregnant.  In joy Jonathan returns from work with flowers and chocolate, but Anna never returns home.  He waits for hours, until he eventually finds out that she is missing, which becomes headlines in the news.

Out of the blue, a man, Raymond Price (Ian McNeice), in a Land Rover, follows Jonathan from his home to his job where he finds out that the man supposedly has had contact with his missing wife.  Raymond discloses that she is dead, and through Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), he can hear and maybe see the dead.  However, like most sane men, Jonathan  disregards the man's plea to listen to him and turns him away.  After some strange occurrences, one of these scenes feels familiar from Takeshi Miike's One Missed Call (2003), Jonathan decides to contact Raymond.

When Jonathan meets with Raymond at his cluttered home he also run into Sarah Tate (Deborah Kara Unger) who is trying to overcome the loss of her fiancé.  Through this introduction the film begins its journey into EVP, as Jonathan begins to find a way to contact his late wife through recordings on tapes and hard drives.  Through one of these attempts Jonathan encounters an angry and intimidating voice to which Raymond simply comments with some difficulty that some are bad people while erasing the voice from the hard drive.  It is evident that this is a crucial part of the film, but instead of enlightening the audience it keeps this darkness veiled to another moment.

Throughout the film there are several moments where the audience will make loops with their eyes, as White Noise almost suggests that the audience is too dense to understand the series of occurrences.  Also, the borrowed quote by Thomas Edison in the beginning of the film suggests that the filmmakers try to use external sources to induce some form of authenticity to the story.  This, too, fails miserably and instead induces further awkwardness.  Lastly, Michael Keaton's character appears almost blinded to the point of stupidity, as he continues on his journey to find the truth and maybe more.  Well, let's put it this way, Jonathan will find more than he anticipated, but at the expense of making the film painful to watch.

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