The Gladney family's comfortable suburban life in Palestine Ohio is upended when a chemical leak caused by a train accident causes "The Airborne Toxic Event," which releases a noxious black cloud over the region that forces the Gladney family to evacuate.

At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic, "White Noise" dramatizes a contemporary American family's attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world.