White Noise : The Light (2007)

Dir: Patrick Lussier

After a botched suicide attempt, grief-stricken Abe Dale (Nathan Fillion) finds he can see a glowing white light hovering around those about to die. He sets to sprinting around Vancouver, saving several Darwin Award contenders from meeting their moronic doom (seriously, the old dude under the truck really had it coming) but his noble intentions are thwarted by invisible zombies, Satanic conspiracy and the ever-present hand of fate. Although there are (to my surprise!) some quite original ideas here, the screenplay is too slapdash to pull them together. Heavy-handed direction ensures that obvious points are clarified six or seven times over, pandering to an audience it clearly views as dribbling idiots. Nathan Fillion can act but he's wasted here as his character is too one-dimensional ever come alive. His love interest, played by squeak-voiced Katee Sackhoff, just comes across as creepy. The film's grand finalé throws internal logic away in favour of flashing lights and cheap CGI, which is a damn shame. I don't know how many hands a script like this has to pass through before it's approved, but it's a pity none of them stopped to make a few key red pen marks. This, like so many recent supernatural movies, has a lot of bright potential but its head firmly buried in the dirt. *1/2