MOVIE REVIEW
Whiteout (2009)
Warner Bros. Pictures
The spirit of William Castle lives on in “Whiteout,” but for all the wrong reasons. The late horror director, known for promoting his pictures with elaborate gimmicks, was one of a kind when it came to audience interaction. For 1959’s “The Tingler,” Castle rigged buzzers to theater seats that jolted backsides whenever the movie’s titular antagonist would attack; that same year, an inflatable glow-in-the-dark skeleton zipped above the audience on a wire just as a skeleton terrorized Vincent Price’s fictional wife during the climax of “House on Haunted Hill.” “Whiteout” – the latest release from Joel Silver’s Dark Castle imprint, his salute to the gimmicky legend – unintentionally revives that brand of fourth-wall breaking. Set in Antarctica, it’s a lifeless murder mystery cloaked in C.G.I. snow blizzards. The filmmakers took the coldness too far, though; the frozen skills employed for “Whiteout” could literally numb viewers’ brains.
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