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Black Noise was directed by Philippe Martinez, written by Martinez, Sean-Michael Argo, and Leigh Scott, and stars Alex Pettyfer, Wayne Gordon, Eve Mauro, Jackson Rathbone, Sadie Newman, and Niki Spiridakos. It follows a search and rescue team whose mission becomes survival after encountering a sinister presence in their location.

The Plot: Movies that progress entirely by way of ideas instead of structuring them into a cohesive whole rarely work. When a movie does this, and is written by Asylum stalwarts, its story is bound to be a miss.

Opening the feature with the exposure of an injured man who gets atomized by an unseen force sets an interesting precedent, with mystery sure to follow. Enter an extraction team led by Ryan (Gordon) currently awaiting a mission in St. Maarten. Now tasked by unknown superiors to pull billionaire Laura (Spiridakos) from a presumably dangerous situation on a nearby island, Ryan gathers his team consisting of Jordan (Pettyfer), Sarah (Mauro), Leo (Rathbone), and Leila (Newman) and gets moving. Instead of finding insurgents, civilians, or their target in town, they find nothing but a kind of dust that triggers a screeching noise that digs up their buried trauma when touched, driving the squad to the brink of madness.

Finding the source becomes the primary objective of Black Noise, but the writers don’t do much with it aside from comparing it to Havana Syndrome; it seems like none of them even had a clue how to present a story with the idea, as Martinez soon allows the movie to meander. Occasional insert shots of the characters being watched are present, but they don’t amount to a new subplot, despite introducing an alien threat. The feature just kind of stumbles around, threatens to use the titular phenomenon as a way to dissect the characters, doesn’t, and ends with a grab bag of climactic (but severely disconnected) B-movie sequences. Ambiguity can be a boon, but not here.

The Characters: With how Martinez, Argo, and Scott introduce the effects of the noise, expectations of depth are bred, but never delivered on. Vaguely characterized and never refined, these soldiers are dust even before some of them are vaporized.

Ryan has the responsibility of watching over the team, a duty assigned by Black Noise without much development, which should make him the most interesting deconstruction to observe, but he doesn’t fall apart with any more flare than the others. His hallucinations consist of the sounds of children screaming and crying, personified by one girl who begs him for help. It’s not hard to guess his backstory, and without any personality, he’s hardly a leading man and more of a face in the crowd.

Jordan’s reserved nature is made into a point of interest during the early stages of Black Noise, as his quiet demeanor isn’t disrupted by the noise, making him out to be a tough nut to crack. Some of his teammates question whether or not he should be on the mission before it starts, adding another source of intrigue. This falls flat when he too starts succumbing to the noise, revealing his trauma to be just as cliched as his peers.

Everyone else is interchangeable, with the movie rarely even addressing them by name. Insinuated tragedies remain generic, with flashes of a car accident and a dead man, an abusive father figure, and something even less defined for Sarah, Leo, and Leila respectively. There’s a good setup in place, but the writers have no interest in personality, and neither do the actors, who probably signed on for the tropical location, as they all give dismal performances.

The Horror: Maybe this is one of those “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenarios, as there are a handful of ideas for terror teased throughout Black Noise, but with the scattershot script, none of them are effective for any sustained period.

Physical damage precedes the psychological here, and to the credit of the filmmakers, they do a good job of establishing the results of hearing the titular sound. With the opening sequence showing the fate of those in the crosshairs, it allows the real characters to experience it chronologically. Tactile hallucinations, bleeding from the ears, and increasing paranoia are the symptoms – all satisfactorily unnerving – but a failure in escalation knocks the wind out of any more potential horror.

Being taunted by trauma and surrounded by emptiness is scary on the surface, but the script couldn’t find a way to visualize it for the screen. Because the writers refused to work through the events of the characters’ pasts, the movie is left to observe Ryan and company wandering around the island while being stifled by headaches until the noise either runs its course or they kill themselves. With more time being devoted to walking than anything else, the energy and atmosphere is sapped from the movie, and it can’t recover.

Alien stalkers are eventually shown, but there’s no way to mince words about this: they just aren’t scary at all. Confusion soon takes the place of horror, with the lame and unexplained extraterrestrials sweeping away whatever remnants of the setup still remained.

The Technics: Vacations and getaways are nice, but normally expensive. One must assume that the funding for this movie was spent on its setting, as just about everything on either side of the camera is weak at best.

Pacing is brutal to the entertainment value of Black Noise; though it at first seems to have a sense of urgency, after the team finds Laura, it slows to a crawl. Despite running at less than 90 minutes, it feels like an eternity between each death or encounter. Although the setting is beautiful, it can’t sustain a pointless picture without a script to match.

Visuals aren’t in the title like sound is, but they’re the main component of the movie, and they aren’t very good. Mike Mahon tries to vary the proceedings with his cinematography, but there’s not much to capture, even from above via drone shots, it’s largely a roofed forest with intermittent buildings. Close and medium shots are frequently draped in harsh blue lights coming from undefined sources during nights. Special effects are used to sell the idea of the characters’ suffering, but without a proper budget, the CG blood and poorly keyed headache vision just looks goofy.

While this movie wants you to focus on what you’re hearing more than what you’re seeing, neither aspect is well executed. Black Noise has a few interesting ideas and a couple unsettling scenes, but it’s too dull and confused to make a loud impact.

28/100