Movie Review
Premonition
Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on March 18, 2007
In Premonition, Sandra Bullock plays an apathetic housewife whose world is turned upside down when she finds out that her husband has been killed in a terrible car accident. To make matters worse, she wakes up the next day to find out that the accident has not yet happened, that it was only a premonition. After seeing this film I believe that I too have had a premonition. What did I see in the future? I saw that this film will draw in a decent audience this weekend at the box office, then proceed to disappoint it.
Why is such a good turnout expected? Simply because there are plenty of ladies out there who are either tired of seeing nothing but family comedies (a la Wild Hogs) and blatant guy movies (300) filling their local Cineplex. And when they see that Sandra Bullock is starring, they immediately associate that with a sappy romantic storyline. Sadly they are in for a rude awakening when they discover that the closest this film gets to romance is the near rekindling of flames lost through years of stale married life between Bullock’s Linda and her soon to be dead husband Jim (played by Nip/Tuck’s Julian McMahon).
Now the lack of romanticism in this flick is not quite enough to steer audiences away, as it is being marketed as a psychological thriller about being able to see into the future and make moral decisions based on those future events. The only problem there is the fact that in order to successful execute a decent thriller, you must be able to lead your audience down a path, surprise them and then at least explain what the heck is going on by the time the credits roll. This is where Premonition fails miserably, with an ending that is not even worth spoiling because it is so bad. It is one of those movies that, when the credits do finally arrive, you are forced to look at the screen and say “Huh?â€
And it is not bad enough that the ending had to make absolutely no sense, the entire rest of the movie has to follow suit. The story takes place over the course of a week (Sunday to Saturday), but the days are lived out of order by Linda. One day she wakes up and it is Thursday, the next day she wakes up and it is Monday. This is not altogether an uncommon way to tell a story, in fact it is quite a unique premise with the potential to be very interesting if done well. The only thing that can go wrong is that if you are not consistent then your story falls apart. In the case of Premonition, if you take all of the days and separate them, then put them in the right order they would make absolutely no sense. Certain plot points never quite connect from one scene to the next, causing us to become detached from the story and annoyed with its inconsistencies, and that just doesn’t make for a fulfilling night at the movies.
In the end there really isn’t a way for me to stop people from seeing this flick no matter how certain I am that they will be disappointed. It is a simple suspense flick absolutely devoid of a payoff, unless you consider utter confusion and a stale taste in your mouth to be a good payoff for a Sandra Bullock movie.
Premonition is in theaters on March 16, has a running time of 110 minutes and is Rated PG-13 for some violent content, disturbing images, thematic material and brief language.
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One Comment
June 6th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Ok, why was this movie titled “Premonition”?
It wasn´t about anyone in the movie having a premonition.
As soon as I realised this fact I had my own goddam premonition…..
that the rest of this movie was going to be unbelieveably annoying……and it was.
The theme was time travel. Jumbled, ill-conceived, utterly confusing time travel.
Even in theory, this movie´s concept doesn´t make any sense. For example,
how in God´s name did Linda´s hubby die the first time around if she hadn´t already
gone forward in time to cause the accident? ( which she “eventually” does.)
What was the overall goddam message of this movie?………Search me.
Why would Linda´s relaxed attitude towards her faith cause her to start jumping
back and forward in time?……….Search me.
It´s the same old Hollywood cliche. Some suited up, soulless ghoul sitting in his
office gets pitched an attention grabbing concept, which he proceeds to
shread, piece by piece until all that remains is the shadow of an idea that may have
actually been something in the hands of someone who cared.
The Prestige, Next, Premonition. Mr Hollywood guy! You know who you, are you fat assed greedy little incubus you….. just keep on banging out these great ideas that never were.
Wrap them in your slick packaging, your big name box office faces and count your safe mediocre profits until you dry up and blow away, you scumbag!
I ain´t wasting a single buck on any of the crap you guys spew out. I´ll download my movies off the net for free (and see what´s on offer) instead of queing up at the cinema
like a good little sheep and throwing my hard earned cash down the drain on pure garbage. If you produce something of quality, by golly, I´ll be hot-footing it down to the nearest dvd store to add it to my collection. If everyone adopted this attitude we´d have the bastards by the buster browns!