White Noise: The Light

If you have not yet seen the film, there may be some spoilers in here for you!
Not that it seemed like a very spoilery movie… I suppose there were a couple of instances.

Another trip to the cinema, in the lovely calm Welsh winter weather…. Anyway, once we had settled down in our lovely seats, progressively peeled off our wet jackets and watched the enjoyable trailer for Hot Fuzz –which looks awesome by the way- I was ready to see the first mainstream film of the year! Perhaps if I were a fan of horrorish films I would have liked White Noise: The Light more… I am trying to be more open-minded, I swear!

Abe Dale’s (Nathan Fillion) wife and son are murdered by Henry Caine (Craig Fairbrass) for an unexplained reason. Suffering from depression he tries to kill himself, but is brought back to life after having a near death experience (NDE) from this he is able to –in simple terms- see when a person is going to die soon, and being a nice guy, Abe goes and saves three people; but not without consequences.

Best part of the film –hands down, and no offence- was the statistic at the beginning, I do not remember the exact figures, but it was something along the lines of; every American will pass by 1.7 people that will later die that day! How crazy is that!!!

Ok, so for all intensive purposes, I went to see White Noise the Light, because Nathan Fillion is a good actor –plus really cool guy- the director Patrick Lussier, of whom I can’t say I was originally familiar with, was a good choice for the director- after editing so many prolific slasher/horror films, but it isn’t the director who I have a problem with in this film, it’s the screenwriter, Mr. Matt Venne; whose script was absolutely atrocious, I’m sorry but some lines just had me rolling my eyes, because some of the dialogue just felt particularly unnatural… not to mention the absurdness of what was going on.
One thing that did hold the film together however was the editing; which was very good, so much that I thought I should mention it.

On the side of this awful script the acting was almost as bad –the only saving graces of the whole film were Nathan Fillion and Katee Sackhoff (well until her eyes rolled into the back of her head, because I just cannot stand things like that, I couldn’t even stand it in Fahrenheit) out of the whole cast, these were the only two characters that I found slightly convincing; and saying that, Katee’s character was written as a right 40s-esque female character –sorry I must be watching too much Whedon-feministy programmes. Though regardless of the character she was written; she played the character rather well, and the same is said for Nathan; who, similar to Katee, also had some bad lines, but shone through in the role. Personally I cannot say the same for his wife and child who seemed to share no chemistry with him whatsoever –wasn’t believable to me anyhow- except the tiny exception with the home video, but even in that it didn’t seem wholly believable with the wife and child.
Now, Craig Fairbrass did have a nice role, and acted it out pretty well also, but I could not stand his accent; sticking a Londoner in with a bunch of Americans will always sound forced -but Craig’s accent just sounded terrible for some reason- especially when a certain guy did some work in Eastenders.
Otherwise the only thing I have to say about the acting was I was actually hoping for more action from Nathan, because he makes any stunts look like they are happening (watch the ‘Filmmakers Journey’ featurette on the Serenity DVD).

I wasn’t so hot for the special effects; and I felt them to all be a bit bleh, I suppose it was the cheesy way they looked that got me, it could have easily been done with a tunnel; and would have the possibility to look much cooler!

One other thing that I found amazing about the film was its concept; personally I hated the whole NDE angle, not to mention the awful Bible bits too. But what I loved was the idea of seeing that someone was going to die that day; what an amazing concept for a game!!! Sorry, if it’s just me, but I would love that in a game, it’d be sort of like Tru Calling and you’d be able to chose to save a person or not, but you’d need to find out how they are going to die etc… It’d be amazing!! The whole three days later thing has to go though! Definitely so…

Now, I’ll get started on the whole NDE angle; which I hated, everyone that talked about it didn’t sound convinced in the slightest way whatsoever; cept for the one line that Abe said about bringing all of the absolute crap of the film into one sentence, and it was a great line, because his friend’s reaction, which if you ask me was akin to mine.
I think the main problem with White Noise: The Light was it was trying to be a thriller, but also a horror film at the same time, for instance the mass legions of dead people were just inappropriate and unnecessary.

I seem to be saying the same wish of Silent Hill in regards to White Noise, but I felt that if the last 5-10 minutes could be cut off, it would have been a better film. I loved the fact that Abe was killed; because that doesn’t usually happen, but that doesn’t mean he should be helping beyond the grave, see in my version he was shot, he also shot Shelley, the vicious cycle ends. The End! Instead it came off as cheesy, I do not like cheese!

As irrelevant as it is, I liked that rather than call it White Noise 2, they called it White Noise: The Light… sort of like Thief Deadly Shadows, or something a bit more similar. Putting a 2 on the end of the film immediately warns me of it. If they called it Batman 2 it’d be shit… doesn’t count with Superman though…

But as far as horror films go, it’s a standard, with some good acting from a couple of the characters, and many jumps galore for those of a sensitive disposition, so I suppose some people would really get off on the film, I just couldn’t be swayed by its ideas and theories.

Cptalbertwesker Rating – 5½ /10
Although it was attempting to be different, it could not escape the cheesy horror film that it was. I can easily recommend the film to fans of Nathan, because he is simply one of the few good things about it, that and the Captain Tightpants reference, which was cute.