Prémonitions

Even though 'Premonition' is a remake, it starts off quite well by creating the suspense but as the story proceeds, we are presented with more plot holes (the scar on the daughter's face was absent on Wednesday but she crashed into glass on Tuesday) and towards the end it all becomes ridiculously messy. It is quite well shot and Sandra Bullock does a commendable job carrying the whole film. However the writing is a letdown and the background score acts as a spoiler. The supporting cast does not stand out much as they are not given much to do. Julian McMahon is quite okay. 'Premonition' pretty much turns out just to be another one of those thrillers that one can watch once and then forget. Towards the end, the writer throws in the religious angle (Bullock's character was not portrayed as someone religious or one who lost faith, thus this does not quite fit) which looks forced and of course the usual Hollywood ending. It is not exactly a boring film as one would sit through it till the end. Mostly because we are interested to know what happens to Linda (Bullock makes us care about her). Other than that, the film creates a mood that keeps the viewer somewhat involved.

Despite the rather thorough drubbing it suffered at the hands of some of the nation's most prestigious critics, "Premonition" is actually a pretty well-thought-out and tightly wound thriller, given emotion and heart by its star, Sandra Bullock. It's not a movie I would be wiling to go to the mat for, but as throwaway thrillers go, this one is really not half bad.

Bullock plays Linda Quinn Hanson, a suburban mother of two, who receives the shattering news that her husband has been killed in an auto accident. However, when she wakes up the next morning, she finds him, strangely, sitting in the kitchen, suddenly alive and well, benignly sipping coffee before heading off to work. The question quickly arises, did she dream the story of his death, is she dreaming now, or is she undergoing some sort of mental crisis precipitated by the shock of her loss? Or is she caught in some sort of bizarre time warp that allows her to jump back and forth between the periods before and after his "death," and, if so, might she be able to step in and alter the course of events to prevent the accident from happening in the first place?

In both concept and form, "Premonition" is pretty much an assembly-line thriller designed to tweak the audience's brain cells for a couple of hours before sending everyone home with not a whole heck of a lot left to think about once it's over. Still, it's intriguing enough while it lasts and only the true nitpickers among us will feel compelled to put its twists and turns in logic under the scrutiny of a critical microscope. Despite a few weak moments in her performance, Bullock actually makes us care about the character and the very strange thing that is happening to her.

"The Premonition" is by no means a classic - or even first rate - chiller, but those with a few spare hours on their hands and a penchant for brain-puzzlers could do worse than check it out.

Time travel, eh? What a tricky old subject it is. Never seem to get it quite right, do they, these filmmakers? They always seem to drop a clanger that's caught not only by those film geeks who can spot obscure meaningless anachronisms that nobody else cares about, but even those who are paying only passing attention (eg. the older daughter doesn't have scars when she should). On top of this, the character caught up in this time-hopping conundrum resolutely fails to do the one thing every ordinary person would do in the same situation: try to break the chain of events. If the reasoning of this film is to be followed the outcome would be the same, but at least there would be a little logic involved.

Sandra Bullock plays the depressed housewife who, for no apparent reason, finds herself batted back and forth in time like a ball of wool between a kitten's paws. Every time she wakes up she finds herself one side or the other of her husband's death and very slowly pieces together the pieces of the puzzle. For the most part her predicament is surprisingly uninvolving, possibly because the writers neglected to give her any sort of character whatsoever, just a set of predictable responses to fantastic situations. Only at one brief moment, when Bullock asks her screen mother, 'If I let Jim die, is that the same thing as killing him?' does the film even remotely look as if it is going to go off in some interesting direction. Unfortunately, that idea is dropped as quickly as it is suggested, and the film lumbers toward one of those predictable conclusions that used to be a twist when Rod Serling wrote it in the 50s.

The film isn't boring, but it isn't particularly interesting either. Bullock does what she's paid to do, but she's a lightweight actress at the best of times so, really, you should know what to expect when you see that she's appearing in this type of film.

"Premonition" had all the elements for being a great thriller, but it ended up as a somewhat mediocre mess. The jumping around days part was interesting, but it was ultimately the director who killed the potential of "Premonition".

Normally I do like the performances in movies by Sandra Bullock, but she was way off in "Premonition". I didn't buy into her performance as a woman who had just lost her husband and the father of their daughters. It was like she wasn't fully there mentally, and that absent performance weighed down on the movie in overall. Julian McMahon did a good enough job as the husband and father.

I was disappointed with the mediocrity of the movie, because I must admit that I had expected much more from a movie with Bullock and McMahon in the lead roles.

The movie was also a bit shallow. The part with the affair in the making was just brought up briefly and then brushed well clear off the table. The characters could have used a bit more depth and background.

All in all, not an overly impressive or memorable thriller. This is not a movie at the top of the recommendation list if you want to watch a good thriller.

Sandra Bullock has to try to figure out if her husband is a live or dead as she shifts through time and dream to sort out her life and his possible death.

New Age-y story is too confusing and less than engaging in a Lifetime style supernatural tale for the big screen. TV movie feel aside the film suffers from doubling and tripling back on itself about nine times too many so that when you get to the end, the "THIS IS REAL" moment you really won't care since you'll have ad the wool pulled over your eyes once too often. I saw this in the theater and began to play a video game on my cellphone to pass the time to the end because I didn't care what was happening I just wanted to know what the end really was(and lest you think I disturbed anyone by doing so, I was all alone). Whats worse my reaction at the end was a loud "Thats it?" said in disbelief.

Its movies like this that make you wonder why we go to the movies when they throw such crap at us.