Premonition (2007)

Mother of two Linda (Sandra Bullock) receives word that her husband has died in a car crash. The next morning, she wakes to find him in bed next to her, alive. The following morning he is dead again. As she discovers an opportunity to save him, she must ask herself: does she want to?

You’d be right to think that this is just another supernatural hokum-pokum yarn with a flimsy premise. Yes, the premise is interesting initially, but as it unfolds it reveals itself to be frightfully conceited and underdeveloped. 

Ultimately, this supernatural tale’s problem lies with its inability to deliver on the heavy significance that it tends to attribute to every detail of the film. Ooh look, she puts a bit of paper in the bin on Wednesday and there it is on Friday! Who cares? Your husband’s gonna die.

Lingering camera-shots and the suspenseful score tease the audience into believing that there’s a weight behind everything, but all the audience will be doing is focusing on the blatant errors and inconsistencies that occur from this pointless messing with the timeline.

Fundamentally, this film boils down to the protagonist’s ridiculous decision between saving her marriage or letting her husband die. Just because your having problems doesn’t mean that he deserves to die! Has she never heard of marriage counselling? Or divorce?

The film wants to be a deep, emotional scrutiny of a stale marriage and the rekindling of lost passion, but the amount of screen-time wasted on Bullock trying to figure out what day it is leaves little space for character development. Only by the conclusion is this problem rectified as we finally begin to care whether her husband dies or not. But by this time it’s too late as we’ve committed too much time to Bullock’s ridiculous and uneventful trips through random days of the week.

Worth it?

Not really. What begins as intrigue quickly turns to boredom. Dull and disappointing.

Pictures: Top Right: She spends the whole film with that confused look on her face, Bottom Left: You will envy those who are asleep

Directed by: Mennan Yapo

Written by: Bill Kelly 

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Peter Stormare

Trailer

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