"Premonition," the latest Sandra Bullock film this side of "Miss Congeniality 2," bills itself as a psychological thriller where "Reality is only a nightmare away." However, the only true reality is that the audience is stuck living in a confused meandering nightmare, which endures for nearly two hours.
The film centers on the seemingly happy married lives of Linda and Jim Hanson. When the couple first moved into their 1920s storybook home, they were crazy in love. But many years and two kids later, they've settled into a groove that has virtually replaced any trace of romance with pink lunchboxes and soccer mom SUVs. They go through the motions of their lives showing little connection to one another — he spends long hours at work and jets off on business trips, while she stays at home to dust, do the laundry and take care of their young daughters. And so the days pass on.
That is until one day when Linda's typical routine is interrupted by a police officer who informs her that her husband has been involved in a fatal car accident. From there, the day plays on as it would in any grief-stricken home. Linda must break the news to her children, her mother comes to help console the family, and she remembers happier times in a white-filtered montage and falls into a sullen sleep.
Fade to white.
She wakes again to find her husband still alive and casually eating breakfast in the kitchen. Naturally, her emotions are thrown off-kilter. Was this all just a dream, a premonition of sorts? It all seemed so real, and the rest of her daily events played out as they had in her "dream."
Fade to white. Repeat.
And so goes the major plot points of "Premonition." Each time Linda wakes, she uncovers new details to help in preventing her husband's death, encounters faces who should be familiar but aren't or just plain rises on the crazy side of the bed — leading to lithium prescriptions and eventual psychiatric evaluation, complete with injections.
The film is so completely and utterly scatterbrained that it's hard to keep track of the major events and their supposed order — even the leading lady picks up a trusty Crayola marker at one point and doodles her own timeline in an effort to grasp some logical flow. The will to be everything at once — but succeeding in few of its endeavors — adds to the film's list of misfortunes.
Its attempt at the psychologically thrilling translates to adding hair-raising music to increase suspense. But here's a tip: The whole violins and screeching strings soundtrack doesn't boost a film's shock factor when added to mundane scenes where people are munching on a bowl of Special K, or (gasp!) taking the linens off a clothesline. When the whole thriller bit is played out, the film also dabbles in some religious themes, as Linda visits a random priest for spiritual guidance and he tells her to fight for what is most important in her life.
In a last ditch effort, "Premonition" attempts to grip audience members with a touch of the dramatic. This basically equates to extreme close-ups of Sandra Bullock's face — which definitely pushes the grief factor to new limits, as viewing the female eyes and inner nostril at a six-inch radius increases the strength of emotions conveyed ten-fold. These ends would have been better met by encouraging some actual feelings from the lead cast members.
While the film's script falters on its own, its pitfalls are only made more evident by the performances of lead actors Sandra Bullock and Julian McMahon. Bullock's natural comedic strength and typically endearing on-screen persona is subdued in her role as the confused wife. With the storyline haphazardly jumping from one sequence to the next, she never truly finds her groove throughout the movie. The same goes for her co-star, "Nip Tuck" star Julian McMahon. The actor tries his best to shake his TV personality as the womanizing plastic surgeon, but can't quite sink his teeth into the role of the bread-winning family man.
Don't kill two hours in a theater on this movie. Trust this reviewer; it doesn't take supernatural abilities to know "Premonition" is merely a hoax of a film.
Grade: 1 out of 5
