Premonition C- Cast: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Kate Nelligan, Peter Stormare Director: Mennan Yapo Rating: PG-13 for violent content, disturbing images, language Running time: 110 minutes
If we hadnÂ’t made such a fuss about Memento back in 2000, we wouldnÂ’t be bombarded with all these movies with nonlinear time frames. Some, like Babel, make the most of the technique. Then thereÂ’s the latest, Premonition. Although it does its best to keep the audience on board as it leaps backward and forward in time (unlike Memento, which starts at the end of its story and goes in reverse ), the result is confusing, disorienting, and ultimately not worth anyoneÂ’s efforts in figuring it all out.
Set in EverySmallTown U. S. A. (it was filmed in Shreveport ), Premonition focuses (in nearly every frame ) on Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock ) a wife and mother living a smug suburban existence in a charming old house with creaking wood floors. And why not be smug ? SheÂ’s got a Ford Explorer in the driveway, a comfortably rumpled wardrobe that looks like it came from the closet of an Austin college girl, an attractive, hardworking husband (Julian McMahon ), and two cute daughters. She jogs, hangs her laundry outside, cooks big Sunday suppers. ItÂ’s the sort of life that many women dream about.
Complacency is tossed out the prettily curtained second-story window when Linda is informed by a kindly, uncomfortable cop that husband Jim has been killed in a car accident. She reacts as expected with numbness, horror, tears. She tells the girls; her widowed mother (Kate Nelligan ) comes to stay and give support.
Succumbing to exhaustion, Linda falls asleep. Upon waking the next morning, thereÂ’s Jim. A bad dream ? Maybe, except it keeps happening. Not only does each new day bring Jim back or take him away, it also doesnÂ’t progress the way a week should. Linda veers from Saturday to Tuesday and in between, never knowing where sheÂ’ll be until she pieces together clues to indicate where sheÂ’s at in her suddenly bizarre timeline. The effect of her increasing disorientation (example: She encounters a someone on Thursday that she doesnÂ’t remember having met on Tuesday because Tuesday hasnÂ’t happened yet for her ) has a devastating effect on her family.
SomethingÂ’s got to happen, and it finally does, resulting in an unsatisfying conclusion. Issues of faith, commitment and the power of love are raised but donÂ’t take us anywhere. Peter Stormare wanders onto the set in a role of a psychiatrist with no clear purpose other than to spout a load of psychobabble exposition; a priest does the same with his fields of expertise.
Director Mennan Yapo may be the only one who knows what the film’s ambiguous outcome is supposed to signify. It’s all very well — and highly intellectual — to suggest that the audience can form its own conclusions, but Premonition is so convoluted that the audience is exhausted, out of patience, and made to feel stupid by the time the opportunity arrives to do so.
This is the sort of film that will benefit greatly from a DVD release packaged with alternate endings. Maybe there will be one that will get Bullock off her grim-faced and depressing progression of sluggish dramas (The Lake House ) and either put her behind the wheel of an action thriller or back into the realm of physical comedy, both of which she does so well. Look into the future, Sandy, and learn from your past — flash that big goofy smile and make us laugh.