Expecting you to believe a lot while borrowing from many ghoulish sources, genre fans will find plenty to enjoy even if there isn’t enough to love.

After Abe Dale (Nathan Fillion) loses his wife and child to a gunman, grief takes its toll and tempts him to take his own life in the hopes of being reunited with them in death. After being pulled back into the world of the living, Abe gains the ability to predict the deaths of others. When that secret knowledge becomes to tempting not to act upon, Abe discovers a truth about his new gift that not only relates to why his family was killed but makes him personally responsible for every life he saves.

Think The Eye meets The Omen. White Noise 2: The Light jumps into the action immediately and wastes no time with suspension of disbelief. For example, the doctor who happens to revive a clinically dead man who comes back with spirit vision also happens to heavily research the subject (and is just as quickly discarded once he provide the much needed back story). You’re either on board or you’re not, so assuming you buy in, what continues on gets perplexing more involved but evens out thanks to Nathan Fillion’s easy-going nature and some great “hanging lantern” lines that echo what the audience is thinking throughout most of the film.

The film also makes very little pretense about what the cast is supposed to do: prepare to die horribly, and with far less imagination than your average Final Destination sequel. Katee Sackhoff has second billing as a nurse in the hospital where Fillion’s character wakes up but barely has more to do than let Fillion save her character. In a film full of two-dimensional characters lined up purely to raise the body count, Sackhoff’s presence adds her own bubbly-but-twisted personality to replace whatever was written on the page.

Forget trying to figure anything out about this film because there isn’t enough clues or time to figure out what happens next before it does, so you’re pretty much just along for the ride. For an intimate setting about souls and the afterlife, White Noise 2 does boast more action pieces than you would expect a film like this to afford. The ending really doesn’t make any more sense than the rest of what happens, but it’s both clever and amusing enough to bring the film to an end. Fans of Starbuck and Captain Tightpants won’t be disappointed.

(a two and a half skull recommendation out of four)