White Noise 2 (2007)

Way Better than the Original

This was way better than the first one, but it did seem like a whole another movie. April 1, 2008

SAVING THE DEAD

Abe Dale (Nathan Fillion) watches as a total stranger walks up and shoots his son, his wife and then himself. Shocked, he mourns the loss of his family uncontrollably until he can take it no more and attempts suicide. But as he makes his way into that ever spoken of white light, doctors resuscitate him and he returns to the land of the living.

Thus begins a tale that seems to be headed one direction before it takes a disastrous turn. Now returned to life, Nathan begins to see auras around various people he encounters, including a doctor attempting to help him. The doctor describes the things Nathan sees and hears as a form of EVP or electronic voice phenomena (a phenomena paranormal researchers actually use).

But things go bad as the people he sees begin to die. Nathan realizes that he has the ability to save their lives and begins doing so, including a young nurse who consoled him in the hospital.

That nasty twist? It seems that once you save someone's life you become responsible for all actions taken thereafter. And since they were taken away from their time to die, they turn around and kill others. As Nathan digs deeper into the man who killed his family's past, he discovers him alive. He also finds out that the man was doing so only because he had saved them earlier. And they would have become killers just like the others he had saved.

Faced with this knowledge, Nathan must now go out and find those that he helped and stop them from killing. Caught in the conundrum of realizing he must take life when his whole goal was to save them, the moral questions Nathan deals with make this movie a complex thriller that keeps you in suspense.

Fillion turns in a wonderful performance, as he always does. The goal of an actor is to not seem to be acting and in all I've had the fortune of seeing him do, I've felt that in each role even when he faces the afterlife or squishy monsters (as in SLITHER). The rest of the cast performs just as well in a story that seems incredible but at the same time somehow believable.

Your views on the afterlife may not change after watching this film. But for the time you spend watching it, you will wonder what you would do in the same situation. And you will wait to find out just what happens to Nathan Dale and those whose lives he touched.
February 12, 2008

My Thoughts on White Noise 2

If you're reading this, I'm assuming you've seen the film. Due to this assumption, spoilers follow, so consider yourself warned.

If you haven't seen the film ... consider yourself lucky.

White Noise 2 has been called "a retarded Sixth Sense", a charge that offends both the mentally disabled and anyone who even moderately enjoyed the Sixth Sense.

While my expectations for any direct-to-DVD movie are understandably low, watching White Noise 2 actually lowered my standards to heretofore unknown depths.

From the Scooby Doo scares to the incredibly poor CGI effects, this movie claims its rightful place in bargain bins around the world and as a featured selection during Amazon's frequent $5 DVD sales.

Occasionally, bad films can also be fun films. That is not the case here. This film is so earnest in its attempt to be morose that it even renders poor Captain Reynolds unfunny, something I thought impossible. There are few things more off-putting than ludicrous trash that tries to play it straight.

After the movie was over, I played a game with myself called, "Which is More Ridiculous?", in which I evaluated certain aspects of the film in order to come to a conclusion about which, among the many absurd elements contained in the film, was actually the most asinine:

Is it the doctor with the goatee and the earring who likes Elvis (he's got Elvis memorabilia everywhere! It's a character trait, see?) and runs a grant-sponsored "ghost monitoring" program, complete with requisite multi-monitor uber-hacker station recently borrowed from Kevin Smith's character from Live Free or Die Hard?

Is it that said uber-hacker station resides in the laundry room of your average suburban hospital?

Could it be that a man who attempts suicide can just walk out of a hospital, no questions asked? Or that said hospital has possibly the worst security of all time? A woman is brutally attacked and nearly abducted in the parking garage, and no one is the wiser. Nathan Fillion acts like a suspicious lunatic in the hallway, nobody says, "boo".

Could it be Nathan Fillion's silly urban hoodie / suit combo that he wears for more than half of the movie?

Maybe it's that the entire plot hinges around one character's bible-slash-journal which actually contains entries like a picture of the devil with the caption, "Lucifer?" Or maybe that said character (a convicted murderer) has been in an asylum for three months, and yet his home computer is still on and the screen immediately shows the last thing he was looking at? Or that his son is playing Sly Cooper, a PS2-era game on a 52 inch screen? Doesn't that kid know any better?! Hello, jaggies!

Or perhaps how the director loved certain shots so much that he shows them multiple times from different camera angles, to show us how totally rad they are? How many times do we have to see a piano fall on top of people? The answer, sir or madam, is three times. How many times must we see a bicycle-riding ghost go right through a car? Twice, because it's that cool.

Given all of this, it's clear that this movie should have been called White Noise 2: The Lamening (pronounced lay-men-ning), due to the huge helpings of lame it serves up at every turn. The plot is horrid. The pacing is turgid. The dialogue is insipid. The score is haphazard and an annoyance at best. The makeup effects were leftovers from The Frighteners (a better movie).

I submit to you that White Noise 2: Electric Boogaloo would have also been an appropriate name, as it would have tied into the whole EVP nonsense, and also indicated what a monstrous stinker this film is. The tagline should have been: You Won't See It Coming, Because You Won't Care.

There is, however, one redeeming quality to this movie. During one of the scenes, there is a promotional poster for John Carpenter's The Thing on the wall. Thinking of classic moments from that better, smarter film is what got me through this one.

To the folks posting 4 star reviews on here and dismissing the lameness as a by-product of the horror genre, allow me to point you towards the above movie as an example of how things are done right. February 6, 2008

What do you expect from a horror movie?

So, what do you want in a horror movie? You want a great story line... its here. You want chilling atmosphere... its here. You want to be scared... its here. Why not some good and cute actors... its here. If you watched the first movie, this one has nothing to do with the other. Thats fine! This one stands on its own. It keeps you guessing and interested to watch it all the way to the end. Go see it! Its worth it. See the light and hear the noise... its calling you... AAHHH! February 4, 2008

[3.5] A sequel that stands on its own.

If terrifying images of potential deaths flashed in front of you, would you attempt to alter the natural order of events?

If this premise sounds familiar, it is because it's been done to death by Hollywood, but this film does cover this territory very well. It's a combination of Final Destination and the original White Noise. While not as violent as FD or as clever and jolting as WN1, this film is good and stands on its own two legs rather than just being a sequel that repeats its predecessor or a sequel that literally continues the story. This is a sequel in name only; it does rely on ideas that come from that WN1, but it goes off in its own direction. I guess the "2" to a popular film is liable to get it more noticed, although I think it could have been titled something else.

In any event, after a near-death experience in which a man loses his family he is plagued by horrifying images of potential deaths that he discovers he can prevent if he acts soon enough. The acting is surprisingly good for a small film and the effects can be quite jarring at times. I thought the plot was clever and the direction was competent and appropriately paced.

This is a good chiller for a rainy afternoon and okay for the whole family (if they are into thrillers). January 28, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...