White Noise: The Light

Last time out Michael Keaton was the furrow-browed widower receiving messages from his dead wife through a maelstrom of static on his television.

Now Nathan Fillion is enjoying - or rather enduring - "electronic voice phenomena" after his spouse and young son were plugged in a diner on his wedding anniversary.

To make matters worse Fillion's family were taken out by a former cast member of London's Burning. In a dirty mac. With stubble.

In this sequel the difference is that Fillion's character Abe Dale can also "see" those about to meet their maker courtesy of a strange halo made from shards of light spikily emanating from their bodies.

Thus armed with this 20/20 foresight, Abe is able to intervene whenever one of the city's abundant corpses-in-waiting is about to cop it and save their lives.

Unfortunately, Abe learns the hard way that the "butterfly effect" of being Mystic Meg crossed with the Good Samaritan has lethal repurcussions.

In the original, the tension was keep tight by virtue of the action centring on Keaton's disintegrating character rather than any CGI shenanigans.

Here, the CGI shenanigans make their unwelcome entry in the form of ashen ghouls turning up hither and thither to haunt poor old Abe.

By the final reel things have got really out of hand with clumsy nods to Lucifer, the old prince of darkness himself, as well as tacky visual references to Don't Look Now.

Fillion, an actor normally able to inject a bit of wisecracking irreverence into the proceedings (cf Serenity, Slither) is left flailing with a weak script.

Katee Sackhoff is just plain dumb as the love interest - "are you looking at my ring or my rack?" - while you're laughing for all the wrong reasons at Craig Fairbrass.

Time to reach for the off button.

Tim Evans