(2007, colour, 96 mins)
Director – Mennan Yapo
Starring – Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon
Premonition is a clever film for stupid people. Much like the Director's Cut version of Donnie Darko, it tries too hard to make sure the audience knows what's going on. The difference is that while Donnie Darko was quite "out there" and the explanation would have been welcome to some, Premonition's plot is so straightforward you'll probably have worked out what's going on long before Sandra Bullock's character does.
Bullock plays a housewife who is informed by a police officer that her husband died in a car crash the previous day. Obviously distraught at this news, she tells her two young daughters what has happened and invites her mum over to stay with her for the night. When she wakes up the next morning, her husband is alive again and making breakfast in the house. Passing off the day before as a bad dream, all is well again until the next morning when she comes downstairs and finds everyone ready to attend her husband's funeral.
It soon becomes clear that Bullock's character is living out the days in her week in a random order: one day it's Thursday, the next it's the Monday before, the next it's the following Saturday. This means that some days her husband's dead, the next he's alive. On some days her daughter has unexplainable scars on her face (with Bullock yet to experience the day in which she got those scars), on other days she's fine.
This much is pretty clear to work out throughout the film, as there are plenty of telltale signs – you often hear people mentioning what day it is and it's not in order, you see Bullock checking a phone book and noticing a page ripped out then on another day you see her ripping the page out – so by the time she comes to the "shocking" realisation that the days are occurring in a random order (and then takes out a big sheet of paper and literally spells it out for the audience when she writes down the correct order in which everything happened), you've already come to that conclusion yourself. It's a twist that you already knew about.
This would have been forgivable however had the film made sense, but the sad fact is that there are more questions than answers by the time the closing credits roll. Some of these are simply gaping plot holes (halfway through the film we found out that Bullock is committed to a hospital on the last day of the week and accused of causing her daughter’s scars, then the doctor tells the police officer that she came to see him about her husband’s death the day before it happened and therefore her behaviour was suspicious, yet this whole scene is completely forgotten about by the end of the movie), whereas others are just silly mistakes (the girl gets the scars while her dad’s still alive, yet when Bullock tells the girls that he’s died (as seen at the start of the movie), she has no scars. Then when it comes to the funeral, the scars are back).
It’s a shame because had it been executed flawlessly it could have been an extremely clever film. As it is, it insults our intelligence half of the time (by revealing “twists” we’ve already worked out ages ago), and insults its own the rest of the time (due to the silly continuity mistakes).
Give this a watch if it ends up on the telly but be ready to get annoyed with it by the end.
2 out of 5
Director – Mennan Yapo
Starring – Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon
Premonition is a clever film for stupid people. Much like the Director's Cut version of Donnie Darko, it tries too hard to make sure the audience knows what's going on. The difference is that while Donnie Darko was quite "out there" and the explanation would have been welcome to some, Premonition's plot is so straightforward you'll probably have worked out what's going on long before Sandra Bullock's character does.
Bullock plays a housewife who is informed by a police officer that her husband died in a car crash the previous day. Obviously distraught at this news, she tells her two young daughters what has happened and invites her mum over to stay with her for the night. When she wakes up the next morning, her husband is alive again and making breakfast in the house. Passing off the day before as a bad dream, all is well again until the next morning when she comes downstairs and finds everyone ready to attend her husband's funeral.
It soon becomes clear that Bullock's character is living out the days in her week in a random order: one day it's Thursday, the next it's the Monday before, the next it's the following Saturday. This means that some days her husband's dead, the next he's alive. On some days her daughter has unexplainable scars on her face (with Bullock yet to experience the day in which she got those scars), on other days she's fine.
This much is pretty clear to work out throughout the film, as there are plenty of telltale signs – you often hear people mentioning what day it is and it's not in order, you see Bullock checking a phone book and noticing a page ripped out then on another day you see her ripping the page out – so by the time she comes to the "shocking" realisation that the days are occurring in a random order (and then takes out a big sheet of paper and literally spells it out for the audience when she writes down the correct order in which everything happened), you've already come to that conclusion yourself. It's a twist that you already knew about.
This would have been forgivable however had the film made sense, but the sad fact is that there are more questions than answers by the time the closing credits roll. Some of these are simply gaping plot holes (halfway through the film we found out that Bullock is committed to a hospital on the last day of the week and accused of causing her daughter’s scars, then the doctor tells the police officer that she came to see him about her husband’s death the day before it happened and therefore her behaviour was suspicious, yet this whole scene is completely forgotten about by the end of the movie), whereas others are just silly mistakes (the girl gets the scars while her dad’s still alive, yet when Bullock tells the girls that he’s died (as seen at the start of the movie), she has no scars. Then when it comes to the funeral, the scars are back).
It’s a shame because had it been executed flawlessly it could have been an extremely clever film. As it is, it insults our intelligence half of the time (by revealing “twists” we’ve already worked out ages ago), and insults its own the rest of the time (due to the silly continuity mistakes).
Give this a watch if it ends up on the telly but be ready to get annoyed with it by the end.
2 out of 5
I haven't seen this, but i must admit that it has never really interested me anyways.
ReplyDelete