Blockbuster Trash: White Noise 2

Really?  Really?!?  Did we really need this movie?  Was the surprise Michael Keaton hit so good that it demanded a follow-up...that had nothing to do with it?  Of course, I'm saying this about the market that brought us Joy Ride 2, Bachelor Party 2 and Wargames 2.  What's next?  The Strangers 2?  What do you mean this film has a sequel planned for 2011?  How about Venom 2 or In The Name of the King 2 while you're at it?!?  So what's this movie have to offer?  In a nutshell, it's a rip-off of The Dead Zone starring the guy from Firefly.  I could probably stop there, but there's so much more crap to talk about.  If there's one thing this movie is full of, it's crap.  The plot is a bizarre mess that dares to be explained in any logical way.  If 'dare' I must, then 'dare' I shall!  Get out your John Travolta body doubles for my review of...

The film begins with a happy family enjoying life together.  You know what that means: people is gonna die!  Sure enough, the husband (Nathan Fillion) takes his family to a diner to celebrate an anniversary.  Really?  I thought people going to Applebees for an anniversary was cheap!  Anyways, the wife and son have a little freak-out as a mysterious man walks in with a gun.  He decides to shoot the woman and child before putting the gun to his own head & firing.  Must resist urge to make Chris Benoit jokes!  Naturally, the man takes this very badly and can't be comforted by others.  One friend is a cop- how convenient- and tells him that he'll look into the killer.  Officer Exposition, however, is not enough to convince Mr. Fillion that life is worth living, so he goes all Marilyn Monroe on us and downs a pill bottle.  Thanks to the timely-intervention of his friend, however, he gets to a hospital in time and lives.  Before that though, he is pulled away from the light in one of the few CG effects this movie uses.  For 2007, this looks like shit!  He wakes up and is greeted by a doctor who is the spitting image of John Travolta in From Paris With Love.  No, that's not a compliment.  Conveniently enough, the doctor is an expert in the occult and the study of 'white noise' created by ghosts.  Oh yeah, his nurse is also 'Starbuck.'  Yea.

After his near-death experience, the man discovers that he can see a halo around people's bodies.  Dr. Not-Travolta tells him that it's normal, only to end up dying a few days later of a heart attack.  Now it all makes sense, he realizes, he can see people's imminent deaths!  He initially tries to flip-off fate by saving a bum from being run over by a bus, but fails to get there in time.  My not hero!  The second attempt works better, as he saves an old man from being crushed by his own car when another vehicle hits it.  The man thanks him and that's the last we see of him...for now.  The next day, he saves a man from falling off of a ledge after he gets into a fight with some men attacking him and his lady.  Who are these people?  Why do they attack him?  Nobody knows.  Plus, our hero makes no attempt to stop these people.  Things go from bad to worse when he visits the hospital and sees an aura around Nurse Starbuck.  He rushes into the parking garage to save her as a random killer tries to off her.  Why?  Nobody knows.  What kind of serial killer waits around a hospital parking lot where there are cameras everywhere?  Anyhow, he fights the guy before being knocked down and...the guy just leaves.  My sort-of hero!  The joy of all of this is ruined when some ghosts randomly attack Mr. Fillion in his home.

Apparently, playing God has its downsides.  Fillion goes to see the widow of the man that made him a widow (stay with me now) and finds out that her husband was obsessed with numbers after a near death experience.  In a video taken three days before the event, he sees the man stop his wife and kid from pulling into oncoming traffic, saving their lives.  Apparently, the guy came up with the idea that he can't save people and must kill the people instead or bad things will happen.  Oh yeah, the guy survived his gun-shot wound to the head!  Fillion goes to see him and things go as well as you might expect.  That day, Fillion hears about how the old man he saved crashed into a bus stop and killed a dozen people.  He goes that night to see the guy he saved, only to learn that the man is possessed...by Satan!  He nearly stops the man from killing some people, only to have him knock three people off of a banister.  Our hero does some math and discovers via some bullshit that it adds up to '666.'  This, naturally, leads him to go to a recital held by 'Starbuck' and try to kill her.  He is thrown out, but she ends up in the same diner again with him.  He tries to kill her, only to have a change of heart and get killed himself.  Turning into a ghost, he flies after her ambulance- she was in shock- and stops it from crashing nonsensically into a tanker truck.  She dies and the credits roll.

This movie sucks so much.  The plot is silly and it's moral is even dumber.  It tells you not to play God, but the only reason not to is because Satan will kill more people if you do!  The moral is to not do good, because evil will do worse?!?  Worst Veggie Tales episode ever!  The acting is pretty decent, Nathan getting by on his usual charm and swagger.  As much as I like the guy, he does not have the range for this movie!  Seeing him act sad and mopey does not work, nor does him acting stoic either.  'Starbuck' has it even worse, with only one happy scene and having to spend the rest of the film reacting and/or crying.  Seriously, Jodie Foster does more emotionally in The Piano than she does here!  The special effects are pretty laughable, turning ghosts into energy balls or showing them as black-and-white.  Yes, all ghosts are gray and glowing!  As a film, it's just not that good, throwing a ton of stuff into the first twenty minutes, padding out the middle and cramming a lot into the end.  As a sequel to White Noise, it has jack-shit to do with the film.  They don't even throw in a pointless reference to that film's events or anything.  What do we all expect by now though?

Next up, I bring you one of two animated tie-ins to some not so successful films.  First up, an explanation for the random opening to 2004's Van Helsing- hurray.  Stay tuned...