Nathan Fillion

WHITE NOISE : THE LIGHT (15)

DIRECTED BY: PATRICK LUSSIER

STARRING: NATHAN FILLION, KATEE SACKHOFF, CRAIG FAIRBRASS

THIS mostly dull, occasionally silly, thoroughly derivative sequel junks almost everything about 2005’s first White Noise, a so-so beyond-the-grave chiller that didn’t wake the audience, let alone raise the dead. Having seen his wife and child gunned down in a diner by inept Satanist Craig Fairbrass, Abe Dale (Fillion) chases down a handful of pills with a bottle of whiskey, then wakes up on the operating table with the ability to identify, and thus perhaps save, those fated to die.

A stray, humourless Final Destination script has had some technological hokum bolted on to tie the film in with its flimsy-but-profitable predecessor: Abe records his suicide note as an outgoing answerphone message, and there’s a lot of loud though not especially scary static from television sets, handycams and mobile phones. Nothing about Lussier’s direction makes it seem any less mechanical than it is, and Fillion - off the back of Serenity’s frivolity - has a tough time trying to convince us he’s cut out for mourning loved ones and playing God.