Film Review

04 December 2008 04:42 BST

Premonition

Directed by Mennan Yapo, out now in cinemas, starring Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon and Nia Long, running time 110 minutes.

In a nutshell…

Deja-vu, chilling, supernatural, confusing, thriller

What's it all about?

Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) hears the news no wife wants to hear – her perfect husband Jim (Julian McMahon), is dead. The usual tears follow; she breaks the news to her two adorable daughters and ends up crying herself to sleep that night. But she wakes up, not only to find that Jim is not in fact dead, but he's up and ready to take the girls to school, oblivious to the apparent goings on of the day before.

Thankful that it is just a bad dream, Linda is relieved. But the next day, she finds her husband is once again dead. The rest of the film is a week in the life of Linda who goes to sleep with her husband dead and wakes up to find he's alive. He's dead. He's alive. He's dead. He's alive. With the help of a dodgy priest and a sinister psychiatrist, she realises that her premonitions of her husband's death could be the gift that could save his life.

Who's in it?

Sandra Bullock is best known for her roles in romantic comedies such as Two Weeks Notice and Miss Congeniality, but recent offerings have seen the 43-year-old depart from these girl-next-door roles and take on more serious parts, including playing a highly-strung, depressed housewife in Crash and a lonely doctor in Lake House. Her starring role in Premonition sees her swap the smiles for more sombre scenes in her role as the widow/not widow Linda Hanson.

Co-star Julian McMahon is most famous for his part in popular US television series Nip/Tuck. More of a TV actor than a big screen star, McMahon has nevertheless featured in Prisoner, Fantastic Four and of course the soon-to-be-released Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

As an example…

Linda to Jim: "I had a dream you're gonna die."

Linda: "I wake up and he's dead. I wake up and he's alive."

Likelihood of a trip to Oscars

I have a premonition this film will go nowhere near an Oscar.

What the others say

"Director Mennan Yapo can't prevent his initially intriguing puzzle from lurching sideways into brain-drubbing nonsense," BBC review.

"Premonition fails to tap into any of Bullock's more innate qualities, leaving her floundering like a boat lost at sea. And everyone else in the movie acts as mere window dressing, including Nip/Tuck's McMahon as the faltering and ultimately doomed hubby. Just a big waste of talent," Hollywood.com.

So is it any good?

Sandra Bullock does her serious-not-smiley best with the somewhat disappointing storyline. It seems like an interesting concept at first – the thought that you could have such a vivid premonition of someone's death and could do something to prevent it. But the lacklustre script and storyline do not do enough with it. First of all, more should have been made of the initial part in which Linda finds out her husband is dead. Putting on a sad face instead of a happy one is not enough to compel the audience to really feel for the widow's plight. And this fault puts the film off to a bad start. The audience doesn't care whether or not Jim is dead or alive because it's not clear what difference it would make to her life if he was gone.

McMahon's wooden performance does not help to bring the film to life and the rest of the cast might as well not have been there.

The director throws in some harrowing, dark art-house scenes in an effort to bring a sinister air to the film, but these do not sit easily alongside the television series feel of the film.

By the end of it, we are left feeling cold, disappointed and with a plethora of unanswered questions.

5/10

Chine Mbubaegbu

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