radioactivez0r
09-05-2007, 07:09 PM
Premonition (2007) - Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon
Summary: Linda Hanson (Bullock) is told on Thursday afternoon that her husband (McMahon) was killed in a car accident the day before. She then wakes up the following day to find him alive and well. The rest of the movie is an involved look at how she comes to understand what's going on and what to do about it.
Because of the nature of the film, I'm forced to include the rest of the review in spoilers, so I apologize now for the trite intro.
Ok. This movie had me, right up until the last 5 minutes or so. When it ended, I wanted to take the DVD and crush it into tiny little pieces, because the final scenes almost ruined the entire movie. The structure is very Memento-like (a wonderful film), in that it jumps around between past and present. Linda wakes up on Thursday, finds out her husband is dead, and then wakes up the next day only to find that it's Tuesday, he's still alive, but she remembers everything. The movie plays out over the course of a week, with her jumping back and forth between the past, when her husband is alive, and the present, when he's dead and the funeral is being held. Because of the way it works, the viewer is constantly forced to re-evaluate what they are seeing. For example: Linda finds a bottle of Lithium prescribed to her and a phone number for a doctor she doesn't remember meeting; the "next" day, we see her calling the same doctor and subsequently getting the prescription based on the events she remembers from the previous day. It's actually difficult getting one's head around it at times, but fun to try.
We come to recognize that the movie's final act will take place on Wednesday, the day her husband is actually killed. Knowing what is about to happen, Linda races to prevent the car accident - and ultimately becomes the cause for it occurring, by making her husband turn around and stall out on a 2 lane highway. I think that would have made the movie complete - perhaps an epilogue of what happened to her, because having to deal with your husband's death twice, actually watching it happen once, and then knowing that you, in your frantic efforts to stop it from happening, brought it about...well, I can't imagine a person staying sane after that. What did the movie folks do? End it on a happy note, showing Linda and her 2 daughters moving out of their house to go live somewhere new -- and she's pregnant. That's the last shot as a voice over from an earlier scene plays, which says "Every day we are alive is a miracle." The more I think about it, the more I think that was a tacked on ploy, and not the original ending. It simply makes no sense.
I wanted to like this movie, but the ending destroyed that chance. 3 stars.
Summary: Linda Hanson (Bullock) is told on Thursday afternoon that her husband (McMahon) was killed in a car accident the day before. She then wakes up the following day to find him alive and well. The rest of the movie is an involved look at how she comes to understand what's going on and what to do about it.
Because of the nature of the film, I'm forced to include the rest of the review in spoilers, so I apologize now for the trite intro.
Ok. This movie had me, right up until the last 5 minutes or so. When it ended, I wanted to take the DVD and crush it into tiny little pieces, because the final scenes almost ruined the entire movie. The structure is very Memento-like (a wonderful film), in that it jumps around between past and present. Linda wakes up on Thursday, finds out her husband is dead, and then wakes up the next day only to find that it's Tuesday, he's still alive, but she remembers everything. The movie plays out over the course of a week, with her jumping back and forth between the past, when her husband is alive, and the present, when he's dead and the funeral is being held. Because of the way it works, the viewer is constantly forced to re-evaluate what they are seeing. For example: Linda finds a bottle of Lithium prescribed to her and a phone number for a doctor she doesn't remember meeting; the "next" day, we see her calling the same doctor and subsequently getting the prescription based on the events she remembers from the previous day. It's actually difficult getting one's head around it at times, but fun to try.
We come to recognize that the movie's final act will take place on Wednesday, the day her husband is actually killed. Knowing what is about to happen, Linda races to prevent the car accident - and ultimately becomes the cause for it occurring, by making her husband turn around and stall out on a 2 lane highway. I think that would have made the movie complete - perhaps an epilogue of what happened to her, because having to deal with your husband's death twice, actually watching it happen once, and then knowing that you, in your frantic efforts to stop it from happening, brought it about...well, I can't imagine a person staying sane after that. What did the movie folks do? End it on a happy note, showing Linda and her 2 daughters moving out of their house to go live somewhere new -- and she's pregnant. That's the last shot as a voice over from an earlier scene plays, which says "Every day we are alive is a miracle." The more I think about it, the more I think that was a tacked on ploy, and not the original ending. It simply makes no sense.
I wanted to like this movie, but the ending destroyed that chance. 3 stars.