White Noise 2: The Light

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Rating 3


Directed by Patrick Lussier

Written by Matt Venne

Starring Nathan Fillion, Katee Sackhoff, Craig Fairbrass and Adrian Holmes


I have not seen the original film, starring Michael Keaton, but I chanced upon the opportunity to watch this sequel and was quite keen to do so.

Nathan Fillion plays Abe Dale, whose wife and young son are killed in an apparently motiveless shooting. Following an attempt to take his own life with an overdose of pills, he has a “white light experience” and afterwards he can identify those whose lives are about to come to a brutal end, via a white light that surrounds them. He believes his destiny is now to save the lives of these people, but this disrupts the balance of life and death. When he discovers that the man responsible for killing his wife and son is still alive he begins to piece together the horrible truth about the consequences of his own actions.

The film never quite managed to involve me fully. I could not escape the feeling throughout that a much better film was trying to fight its way to the surface. It seems as if screenwriter Matt Venne got caught in the middle of two different plot progressions and could not decide which one to go with. On the one hand, the story delves into the precarious balance between the worlds of the living and the dead, but Venne apparently could not prevent himself from adding in some vagaries about the fall of Lucifer and the Beast 666.

The influence of many other films is clear. ‘Flatliners’ and ‘Fatal Destination’ immediately come to mind – as does ‘Starman’, with Nathan Fillion standing in for Karen Allen’s character. There is a risible visual nod to the Nicholas Roeg classic ‘Don’t Look Now’ that is as pointless as it is blatant.

Fillion has genuine screen presence. His involvement is definitely an added bonus. I chanced to see a couple of episodes of ‘Bionic Woman’ and thought Katee Sackhoff was rotten in those, despite the many opinions to the contrary, but she is much more likeable here, reminding me a little bit of Patricia Arquette. I’m not sure about the casting of Craig Fairbrass. He always puts me in mind of a terrible Guy Ritchie East End gangster film.

It’s a horror film without buckets of offal – which is a good thing, I think. It might not be very original, but it’s not without its enjoyable moments.


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Slither

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Rating 3


Written and directed by James Gunn

Starring Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry and Matreya Fedor


This comedy-horror, a kind of homage to films like ‘Invasion Of The Body Snatchers’ and ‘It Came From Outer Space’ with added ‘Critters’-style gore, received almost universal good reviews, although Roger Ebert wasn’t impressed. It was written and directed by James Gunn, the writer of the two ‘Scooby Doo’ films, and was made on a small budget - $15 million, not much more than a third of the cost of ‘Serenity’, as way of a comparison.

The buzz about the film had begun before it was released into cinemas and all the signs suggested it was going to be a box office hit. However, the Internet buzz and favourable reviews failed to translate into an actual audience for the film. It grossed less than $8 million in America and only just scrapped over the $12 million mark worldwide.

I don’t think ‘Slither’ is quite the classic suggested by some of the reviews. The small-town Midwest setting is perfect, although this is no ‘Matinee’. It didn’t impress me like ‘Tremors’. In fact, I probably found ‘Evolution’ funnier, although ‘Slither’ is undoubtedly a better film.

By all accounts, James Gunn has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre. I think the visual reference to the David Cronenberg film ‘Shivers’ in the publicity and in one scene in the film itself was a wrong turn. However, it is an enjoyable and quite light-hearted film and it does have some very clever touches, such as the ‘Crying Game’ karaoke moment, that plays as a good-natured parody of David Lynch.

Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks work well together and they are a likeable screen couple. They both have something that hints at the “Golden Age of Hollywood”.



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