White Noise (2005) Review
How A Garbage Michael Keaton Horror Movie Changed The Movie Release Calendar Forever
A Quick Note: I’ve been mostly taking it easy in January, apart from some original new pieces. But after some rest, and cleaning up my system of figuring out what movies I have and haven’t published reviews for yet, I’m going to be posting more regularly again. I still won’t be daily, or have any artificial goals but if you’ve missed me talking about a random older movie, you’ll soon be getting your fill of me once again.
To start things back, here’s a weird bit of history where a bad Michael Keaton horror film somehow changed the Hollywood release calendar forever.
Michael Keaton had a pretty dire 00s, so I don’t know if this is his low point, but he’s rightfully checked out of this cinematic sleeping pill.
What’s weird though is its poor quality contributed to Hollywood making a realization that remains true to even this year. I don’t know how this hadn’t happened before, but apparently with this film, Hollywood realized that if you release a genre movie with even a vaguely intriguing premise in January, when there’s literally nothing else to watch, it has a chance to do well. How else do you explain this movie making $90 million with a $10 million budget? It apparently doesn’t even have to be good!
Before “White Noise,” the biggest opening weekend for a film in January was the Special Edition of “Star Wars” in 1997. After White Noise? “Hostel” became a huge horror hit in 2006. Then in 2008 the trend was sealed with the massive opening of “Cloverfield.”
Now films regularly do extremely well in January. Just this past January, “Escape Room,” “A Dog’s Way Home,” “The Upside,” and “Glass” all not only made back their budgets, but thrived with the freedom of release dates that were once considered dumping grounds. It’s not exactly the new June quite yet, but with the January 2020 release of a new ‘Grudge’ movie, and the big-budgets of ‘Bad Boys 3’ and the Robert Downey Jr. Dr. Dolittle movie, it seems the road paved by “White Noise,” of all movies, continues on.
Editor’s Update: Little did I know a couple weeks after writing this that the aforementioned ‘Bad Boys’ and ‘Dolittle’ would not only be successful that January, but also be some of the highest grossing films of 2020. Granted, there’s a pretty huge asterisk for that fact, but still!
January regained its surprising box office potability however in 2023, when the film “M3gan” became a cultural phenomenon, and made $170 million in profit. In 2024, the big January release was the “Mean Girls” musical, which was originally slated for streaming, but because it had no competition at the theaters in January, it will make Paramount some $50 million in profits.
1/5 Stars
⭐️
