O Terror da Premonição

While driving through the countryside with his wife and daughter,Hideki Satomi stops at the phone booth to send an email.There he discovers a scrap of newsprint with his daughter's picture on it,and an article describing her death in a traffic accident.With a sense of horrible premonition and foreboding,he witnesses the terrifying automobile accident that had been accurately described in the article.The grieving father becomes obsessed with uncovering the mystery of the newspaper."Yogen" is the second installment in Taka Ischige sponsored "J-Horror Theater" series.The film is not as effectively creepy as "Kansen",but the acting is great and the beginning is truly powerful.The climax is pretty satisfying,unfortunately the middle section of the film leads to nowhere.Still if you like sophisticated horror films that deal with fate and its consequences give "Yogen" a look.7 out of 10.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be able to see into the future? To predict events before they happen? Well, PREMONITION presents us with the darker, bleaker side of this concept.

What if you knew about an upcoming tragedy or disaster? Would you attempt to alter the outcome? Unfortunately, in this film, there appears to be a high price to be paid, regardless of what is done. Or, not done. If your itch is scratched by stories about otherworldly events and the creeping unknown, you've hit pay dirt!...

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

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.

In Norio Tsuruta's Premonition, a malevolent supernatural newspaper selects victims at random and reveals to them disastrous headlines from the near-future. When family man Hideki Satomi finds himself haunted by the evil rag, he enters a nightmare world from which the only escape appears to be death.

Like Final Destination, the US horror hit that also dealt with foresight and cheating fate, Premonition is a supernatural chiller that opens with a bang: protagonist Hideki witnesses the death of his young daughter in an auto accident immediately after learning of her impending fate via a mysterious paper. It's an excellent beginning to the film: suspenseful, exciting and very harrowing.

Unfortunately, after this promising start, the plot slowly begins to lose momentum and despite great performances from its cast and one or two outstanding scares, the whole film looks set to be a huge disappointment. To his credit though, director Tsuruta picks up the pace again in the film's dying moments for a crazy finalé which sees Hideki leaping through time and space in a desperate bid to change history.

All in all, I found this inventive slice of J-Horror to be a reasonably fun ride, despite leaving me with a ton of unanswered questions (Why does the paper like to torment people? Why does it choose Hideki? Who prints the bloody thing? If it turns up on a Sunday, do you get supplements?) and fans of the Asian horror scene should still give it a go if they get the chance.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.