Premonition

Following closely on the heels of 'Kansen' (aka 'Infection'), 'Yogen' in the next J-horror flick in the planned series. Arguably better than it's predecessor, it still fails to achieve greatness.

While on a family vacation, a man finds a newspaper clipping detailing the death of his daughter moments before she dies. After the incident, the man and his estranged wife try to understand how this phenomenon occurred and possibly how to use it to change the future.

The opening scene makes a promise that much of the film doesn't live up to. It's a tightly filmed piece of suspense that yields a great pay off, yet sadly the scenes that follow dwindle into monotony and tedium as the audience must wait for the characters to figure out what has already been clearly stated. I hate to say it, but I had a hard time sitting through much of the film. Not until nearer the end do things pick-up again, when the father begins a twisted time traveling scenario that borders on sheer lunacy and is so deliciously entertaining.

Technically the film is competent. Camera work, color, and the like are good. The actors are also quiet capable even if the writing is dull. All in all no better or worse than most Japanese horror flicks.

A quality opening and a bizarrely satisfying conclusion bookend an otherwise ordinary tale of loss and the supernatural.

6/10

Skillfully edited and highly tensioned, Yogen is one every so often discussed psycho-horror. It's been produced from the idea of the same titled Japanese comic book of 1950s' and follows the storyline of a solid Japanese novel from the same decade. The comic book creates a heroic theme out of a psychic family man who saves his family from a traffic accident, while the novel focuses on precognitive newspaper delusions seen by ordinary people.

In the opening scene, giving a little clue of the main idea, we're being introduced to a middle-aged female victim of a paranormal incident taken from a newspaper article. She is being tested over her newly acquired supernatural skills at an university research laboratory. The second scene, where main characters are introduced, has the heart-wrenching traffic accident that gives cause for a chain of more alike accidents. The common trait of each accident is that they both have precognitive warnings to their survivors. The survivors of this first accident were parents to a 5-year-old singleton, who got killed in the accident. To their surprise their daughter has been the only vein that holds them together. Atfer the death of their daughter they get parted. They both keep receiving precognitive warnings for next alike accidents of their colleagues, disciples, friends and relatives.

Over the last few years we've seen likes of this idea in Hollywood. With Sandra Bullock, also with Nicolas Cage there were either action or drama based films displayed. Among all, Yogen has the most influential message: Everyone has tremendous abilities hidden inside that might become surfaced once in a while for everyone. But we're not born to behave like angels or daemons. To have psychic skills is no means of becoming stronger or wiser. Uncontrolled power is not power at all, and we're not born to have such powers.

With extreme usage of melodrama and surrealist pen-portraits, Yogen is a one-way ticket for travelling into a metaphysical world of limitless secrets, symbols, dreams and intuition where time has lost its permanence.

Norio Tsuruta is one of those journeyman directors who has gained work from the recent reinvigoration of Asian horror. His Premonition is watchable enough even if, like the other work from this director, it hardly reaches the heights of more celebrated titles from the same source. Despite effective moments,it suffers from an atmosphere more often glum than truly terrifying, as well as structural disorientation in its last part which is at best a welcome change of pace, and at worst slightly incoherent.

Premonition's Twilight Zone-type central idea (even the source story's name, 'The Newspaper Of Terror' is reminiscent of pulp fiction) is of a demonic publication, extracted from the 'Akashic Record': "a place in the cosmos where all events, past and present, are recorded." The Record appears at disconcerting and unsettling moments to those with sight to see it and offers, to those few at least, dire warnings of the future. Its exact provenance is otherwise unexplored except in a couple of hushed conversations, but the ominous paper appears in time to offer its unfortunate recipients the chance, if at some personal cost, to change the destinies of others. In one of the more effective scenes, the Record is first seen and read by one Hideki Satomi (Hiroshi Mikami), a college lecturer who learns of the impending death of his three-year-old daughter. Unable to believe his eyes and use the foresight allowed, the tragedy duly occurs. Flash forward three years and the still distraught and distracted Satomi, now estranged from his wife, finds that the Record reaches him again, this time with news of a murderer's next young victim. Meanwhile his wife's scepticism is overcome when, through a medium, she discovers independent verification of the spectral broadsheet...

After the initial loss and the shock it engenders, for the most part the film now settles down into a mildly disturbing rut of dread and guilt brought by the expected off-world news. Satomi and wife, now brought back together by events, track down the earthly remains of a psychic who previously also had the curse of precognition. Working amongst his (amazingly dust-free and neatly racked) effects to reconstruct his warnings - a process including the use of a video as a moment of shock, a by now stock-in-trade of Japanese horror - the two soon confront the narrative's central dilemma: whether or not to change events, even when to do so inevitably leads to physical deterioration and madness.

The principal suspense factor of the film is thus predicated around the newspaper's expected arrival, which duly arrives in a few suspenseful moments (my favourite is of the publication, hovering like some bird of prey, hunting alongside a desperately speeding car) and there are some spooky moments set in an asylum. But a sustained atmosphere of terror is a difficult trick to pull off, and ultimately the film suffers in comparison to more effective productions with similar, dark atmospheres - like Dark Water for instance. Perhaps recognizing this, Premonition's most notable creative decision occurs in the last section of the drama when, as a climax to the piece, Satomi undergoes a series of frightening spatial and temporal experiences. It's rather a shock, especially after the linear construction dominating the rest of the film and, frankly, internal logic is a little strained. But these few minutes, right up to and including the end, have the merit of finishing with a much needed flourish. They also inject something of the disorientation of fear into proceedings, bringing a sustained and necessary sense that the human is at the mercy of a capricious cosmos that was missing previously. And, if this reviewer wished that matters had come to an end more darkly than the final, slightly-too-happy conclusion offered here - bringing up the credits on the abrupt death of a major character for instance, would have been more disturbing - these last, fast-moving scenes offer tension in a way which aptly harks back to the beginning.

The acting of the principals is adequate, even if there are no scenes that require complex emoting. The UK copy seen by this reviewer was cropped uncomfortably from what looks like an original ratio of 1.85:1. For a genre in which fear often lurks at the edge of the frame, this is an unfortunate choice, especially when some relatively undistinguished cinematography needs all the help it can get. No real extras either. If you're a fan of this sort of cinema, then the overall package will remain entertaining enough, and it will certainly serve until something better comes along.

While stopped at a roadside phone boot for transmitting his work through Internet to the university, Professor Hideki Satomi (Hiroshi Mikami) finds a scrap of newspaper with the picture of his five years old daughter Nana (Hana Inoue) in the obituary. He sees his wife Ayaka Satomi (Noriko Sakai) trying to release their daughter from the seat-belt, when a truck without steer hits his car killing Nana. Three years later, Hideki is divorced from Ayaka, who is researching paranormal persons who claim to have read an evil newspaper anticipating the future still trying to believe on Hideki, and she finds that there are people cursed to foresee the future but without power to save the victims. When Hideki changes the future saving Ayaka, he becomes trapped in hell and he has to make a choice of his own destiny.

"Yogen" is another eerie Japanese horror movie, fortunately not spoiled yet by an American remake. The creepy story about a cursed professor that blames himself for not saving the life of his daughter, destroying his own life, is very weird, original and scary. The scene with the car accident is very impressive, and when Hideki is trapped in hell, the slow pace of the film changes to a frightening sequence. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Terror da Premonição" ("The Terror of the Premonition")

Excellent Japanese psychological horror film.

Not a lot of blood or scariness; this film is a mind game.

Long time Japanese actor Hiroshi Mikami sees his daughter's death minutes before it happens. His wife, Noriko Sakai (star of the Japanese version of The Grudge 2), thinks he is crazy and they split.

But, she investigates further and finds a strange Japanese legend about premonition.

They find out what happens if you try to change it, and he has to choose his destiny.

Tense drama, slow at times, but a great ending.