I found the original White Noise (with Michael Keaton) about as interesting as watching static on a TV and felt that there was absolutely no need to go into sequel territory at all but it must have made some cash as the studio men (or women) went against all logic and put the money up for a sequel anyway. I managed to catch this on DVD recently.
There are two amazing things about White Noise 2. The first is that I watched it at all after seeing the first one, and secondly it is actually better than the first movie. Of course the only real reason why that is amazing is because nine times out of ten sequels tend to be even worse than the film that came before it, so if the original film is bad then the newcomer is generally terrible, and so on, but I have to admit that there were some genuine make-me-jump moments to be had when watching White Noise 2. But a word of warning, although it is better than the first film it is by no means perfect.
Abe Dale (Nathan Fillion) witnesses the apparent motiveless killing of his wife and son in a diner, the killer looks at him after the deed is done and apologises to him before putting the gun under his own chin and pulling the trigger leaving Abe alive to grieve and wonder why and where it all went wrong. We jump forward and see Abe three months later struggling to come to terms with past events and he decides to end the pain with a shed load of pills. A pal finds him and gets him to hospital where they revive him, but not before he has an NDE (Near Death Experience).
After he is well enough to leave hospital he starts seeing a white glow around certain people. We find out that soon afterwards these people are destined to die; Abe thinks that this new found “power” will allow him to save people from their fate and indeed he starts doing just that, even saving a women, who becomes his new girlfriend, from certain death and Abe starts to feel good about him-self again. However as he finds out more about the death of his own family and a shock discovery about their killer he begins to think that saving these people may not have been such a good idea.
This is by no means the best horror film that you will see but at the same time it isn’t a complete waste of time watching it, there are a few jumpy scenes that crop up every now and then, and for those of you that have seen the first film the pace is a little quicker. There are a few problems that I have with the film which would be classed as spoilers and so I cannot really go into too much depth on them but they surround the portion of the film when Abe finds out more about the killer of his own family. There were two bits to this that didn’t sit right, one of which was “surely the Police would have told him” and although that may sound a bit cryptic if you ever see the film I think that it is obvious what I mean. The second I cannot mention at all as it is a big spoiler.
The one issue that I have that isn’t a spoiler is right at the beginning of the film when we see this family get shot. Tell me if I’m wrong but isn’t getting shot a rather bloody, messy affair? Yeah I thought so; perhaps all the blood had already left the victims body before they had been shot!
Nathan Fillion is playing Abe Dale. I have seen him before (probably in Serenity) and he seems to have done mainly TV work. I cannot remember seeing him change his expression much through the entire running time of the film, and he struck me as being amazed that he had ever gotten to be in a real to life movie in the first place, and there was something about the way he portrayed the character that I just didn’t like, he just did not come across as genuine.
The main support for Fillion is Katee Sackhoff. She plays Sherry who is both the Abe’s nurse after his overdose and his sort-of-new-girlfriend. Their relationship grows a bit stronger after Abe saves her from a potential rapist/murderer and they begin to get close. I liked her part, she seemed interesting as a nurse and when we see her outside of the ward she does have more depth to her, I think that she actually carries Fillion throughout some of the scenes.
The main thing for me is that like the previous film it isn’t really sure what it wants to be, the EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) is not really dwelt upon before Abe is off being a “superhero” trying to save people from their imminent death and it all gets into a bit of a muddle. I think if they had used the EVP as a basis for the film then it would have felt more solid.
Overall:
Whilst White Noise 2 is better than the first film it still lacks the vital ingredients to make it a genuinely good film that will have you chewing your nails down to the quick.
The cheapest I have seen this film as of was on HMV at £4.99 and in truth, for me that would be still too expensive for this film, if it was in a bargain basement for about £3.00 I might take the plunge but I would say that you should give this one a miss.