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March 23, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > Premonition wastes viewers’ time, money

Premonition wastes viewers’ time, money

By Risa Gordon | Thresher staff

A good score is a key to a good movie. Would that animatronic shark in Jaws be as frightening if the ominous “duh-dun, duh-dun, duh-dun” did not accompany it? When Scarlett vows to “never be hungry again,” would her words be as powerful if “Tara’s Theme” did not swell majestically in the background?

Premonition features a similarly prominent score that is often the sole on-screen sound. But the music merely calls attention to the fact that Premonition is just a science fiction drama that masquerades as a thriller.

Initially, the plaintive piano and violin notes convey an appropriate sense of impending doom. As housewife Linda Hanson (Miss Congeniality’s Sandra Bullock) goes about her mundane daily activities one morning she does not have a sense of the tragedy that will soon interrupt her life. But thanks to the music, the audience sure does. Soon, however, the score becomes downright silly: Time and again the music intensifies, signaling an looming horror that never materializes.

The initial concept of the movie is intriguing. Linda experiences the week of her husband’s (Julian McMahon of TV’s “Nip/Tuck”) death out of time sequence, which implies that she may be able to prevent it. But Premonition never gets past this device and the ultimate conclusion is shallow. It is as if Lautlos’ Mennan Yapo, directing his first major movie release, felt an urgency to wrap up the movie under two hours at the cost of plot development.

Not content with a straightforward drama, Premonition tries too hard to be scary. Nearly everyone with whom Linda interacts has an air of creepiness — even her mother. It might not be a bad idea for psychologists and psychiatrists to put together a class-action lawsuit against Yapo for his depiction of the unnecessarily eerie Dr. Norman Roth (Nacho Libre’s Peter Stormare), conveniently the only psychotherapist listed in Linda’s phonebook. Roth’s inattentive and irresponsible therapy style is the hackneyed and inaccurate portrayal of therapists that should be reserved for cheap slasher flicks.

Similarly unnecessary is Linda’s cigarette smoking at the start of the movie. Since the cigarettes disappear as Linda’s stress mounts, it is hard to make a connection between her smoking and her mental turmoil. Instead, it is just an inconsistency in Linda’s suburban mom character.

To make up for its lack of explanation about the reason for Linda’s time-traveling, the movie briefly tries to incorporate a lesson about the important aspects of life. A late-in-the-game visit with a priest — who conveniently pulls out a book about examples of similar incidents — moralizes that Linda’s lack of faith has caused the events. Unfortunately, Yapo’s idea of a religious theme is poorly executed. Introduced too late and brought up again in hurried flashbacks, it becomes a failed attempt to provide the movie with an overall sense of purpose.

Despite this lack of substance and its glaring inconsistencies, Premonition is not all bad. In fact, it does a lot of things right, starting with Bullock. As Linda, the actress conveys her grief and confusion without hysterics and tears. Similarly, excepting the lack of a vision, screenwriter Bill Kelly (Blast from the Past) does well moving the film quickly into the meat of the story without a lot of unnecessary exposition.

The movie also excels in making the audience identify with Linda’s confusion. Viewers discover information alongside Linda and have the same memories of the mixed-up week. The only element missing is an emotional connection with any character other than Linda, which makes it hard to care about the movie’s conclusion. The audience is invested in unraveling the mystery and seeing the week through to the end rather than saving the life of Linda’s husband.

A favorable option to seeing the whole movie is just to watch the trailer. Most of the critical scenes are included, and some of the more confusing ones are omitted. Forgoing the movie for the trailer will leave audiences with the same questions in a fraction of the time.

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