White Noise 2: The Light (2007)

Director Patrick Lussier
Writers Matt Venne
Starring Nathan Fillion, Katee Sackhoff, Craig Fairbrass
Genre Ghost
Tagline Sometimes they don't come back alone.
Country

Talk us through it

Abe Dale is a successful IT professional, this wasn't made completely clear, who has the big house and all the associated material chattels one would expect an upper middle class Yank to have. He also has the adoring wife and a son who may or may not be on spectrum. It's the morning of Abe and Rebecca's ninth wedding anniversary and they head off to a local diner with son Danny for breakfast. Unfortunately an apparently deranged gunman arrives, guns down Rebecca and Danny, before turning the gun on himself. We later learn the gunman's name is Henry Caine, have no idea whether the pancakes were any good or not.

After the funeral Abe decides suicide is an option and gulps down large amounts of pills and bourbon. In the nick of time his boss comes to the rescue and Abe is dragged back into the land of the living after a particularly poorly realised near death experience. While this is probably a good thing, and Nurse Sherry Clarke seems taken with Abe, he also brings back an ability to see auras around certain people. Those people would be the ones slatted to die in short order. Naturally Abe, using his new paranormal superpower, leaps into action and saves a number of people from death, including Nurse Sherry. Only saving people isn't all it's cracked up to be, as Abe discovers three days after his first saved person, suffering maxtreme road rage, rams a bus shelter causing a number of fatalities.

Ready to once again check between the channels and see what might be lurking?

Review

“If you save a life... you are responsible for it.” - Henry Caine.

Back in 2005 Michael Keating, a surprise lead for a horror movie if there ever was one, failed to stun the dark genre hordes with White Noise. The movie was rightly viewed as being a failure due to the pseudo-technology that only the gullible were about to believe and a final act that was simply atrocious. Naturally since general apathy killed the movie dead, no pun intended, Brightlight Pictures decided everyone would want a sequel. History does repeat kids, the first couple of blocks of White Noise 2 were okay in my opinion, the final block had me sniggering and reaching for the tequila. Why do Boredwood writer types singularly not know how to tie up a horror flick in convincing fashion? Let's put the television out of tune and see what the dead people think!

White Noise 2 pretty much dispenses with the whole EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) thing that pretty much didn't work in the first movie. This sort of pseudo-science, and the extras on the original movie's disc were at pains to try and offer some proof of concept, doesn't tend to work at the best of times. Gullible people might be fooled by this sort of schlock, most horror fans simple roll their eyes and go with the flow. We get the odd out of tune television, some interference of the sort I only see when my team is about to score a try, and a general feeling writer Matt Venne is only paying lip service to what was pretty much a dumb idea for the basis of a horror flick in the first place. Since White Noise is emblazoned on the static inspired artwork I guess Venne felt he should nod in the EVP direction before strafing that particular lifeboat. Overall a good decision, commercial television is generally bad enough at the best of times without imbibing it with all sorts of paranormal shenanigans. Though Bert Newtown's continued career does prove there's life after death.

Unfortunately while applauding the jettisoning of the whole EVP thing I have to wonder if Matt Venne couldn't have been just a tad more original in what he replaced it with. We get the whole NDE (Near Death Experience) thing, as envisaged by 1,001 new age gurus, the dead coming back via electronic openings, say hello to the infinitely superior Kurosawa's Pulse (2001), and a sort of Omen/Da Vinci Code interpretation of biblical scripture. In short there's nothing original here, and it's been done better in previous movies. Somehow Venne manages to build a coherent structure from a lucky dip of dark genre themes and ideas. How exactly all this ties together, and at times you are wondering how Venne is going to pull it off, is about the only interesting thing going down. Guess I should mention we get a bunch of stuff purloined from the Final Destination and Ring franchises as well.

White Noise 2 kicks off effectively and the Audience are under instruction that things might head into Creepyville very quickly. Unfortunately Director Patrick Lussier destroys any short lived credibility he might have with sudden jump scenes, and the moment of anticipation is lost. Yes we are in the midst of another Hollywood conveyor belt horror flick that isn't going to leave us with the warm and fuzzies. Rather than trying for tension and atmosphere we end up with a retread of 101 recently Boredwood horror flicks that simply don't known what particular tiger they have by the tail. White Noise 2 crashed and burned for a very good reason, think we might have outlined that already folks.

There are a couple of surprises coming at you, not the least of which is the why of Abe's wife and son's death, but in the final wash up they aren't enough to justify sitting through this movie. Actually I don't want to even go near the whole why of the aforementioned deaths, that's so poorly handled that you have to wonder if it wasn't filmed by a couple of work study students while the crew went out for danish and coffee. Some twists appear to be due to Writer Matt Venne belabouring points, he doesn't respect his audience, while others are simply tacked on affairs because the script called for them. I definitely had a couple of “no way” moments, and was left wondering if Venne didn't compose his script on butcher's paper using overly large crayons. Sorry if you are not going to respect me as a viewer then sure as hell I'm not going to respect you as a writer.

The final block of White Noise 2 managed to rival the original movie's ability to squander any good word of mouth the preceding two acts had accumulated. I normal love me some biblical aspects in a horror movie, it's a catholic thing folks, but neither love nor money could bring me to view the goings on in the final act of White Noise 2 as anything but unintended farce. It was such a left field poorly thought out development that I was left wondering how the hell anyone could have thought this dubious detour from sanity would in anyway shock the audience. I'm still cringing over the share ineptitude on display here. A Friday the 13th sequel has more respect for it's audience than White Noise is displaying as things descend into the mire of half baked ideas writer Matt Venne seems to think will float.

I note Venne wrote the screenplay for the Masters of Horror episode Pelts but hadn't done much else prior to his full length debut in White Noise 2. To be honest it shows, a more seasoned writer should have been called in here to try and save a script that capsized from about the half way mark.

Nathan Fillion (Abe Dale) presents us with the square jawed American hero, but for mine was not convincing enough in the role. He was too ready to believe, there was no “get the hell out of here” moment with the actor. Katee Sackhoff (Sherry Clarke) for mine delivered a Sackhoff role, which is fine as I dig her work. Took me a while to snap that she was Starbuck in the remodelledd Battlestar Galactica. And Craig Fairbrass was suitable deranged as Henry Caine, stealing most scenes he appeared in.

Normand Corbeil delivered a sombre at times disturbing piano driven score that needed a much better movie. You can imagine Corbeil being called in to add the soundscape to a remake of say The Changeling, the dude knows atmosphere which is more than Director Lussier can claim in his resume.

Summary Execution

White Noise 2: The Light was one of those movies I wanted to get my hands on but that I wasn't prepared to invest anything in the way of a ticket price in. Given the original movie I wasn't expecting anything approaching a decent hour and half, which is just as well as we only get a few decent scenes. I finally succumbed to the movie's temptations in one of those el cheapo fly by night DVD and assorted rubbish shops that crop up from time to time. At $10 the movie was still about double it's recommended value. I got through to the final credits with growing disbelief that someone actually greenlighted this mess of a script.

Apparently the movie didn't get a cinema release in either North America or Downunder, with good reason, but appears to have been something of a hit with both Critics and Reviewers. And people ask why I started writing my own reviews! Sorry couldn't be bothered doing any research as that would have involved more time than I wanted to invest in this one.

No recommendation folks except for the hand fill of poor souls who actually enjoyed the first one and who are now patiently waiting on the next Twitard movie. This film might work for the early teen set who want to pretend they are being scared but holds little merit for anyone else. Tried tuning between channels on the radio to see what the other side might think but all I got was static, which in the wash up made more sense than the misguided attempt at an explanation in White Noise 2.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  Even worse than the first one.