Premonition (2007 film)
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| Premonition | |
|---|---|
 Promotional movie poster for the film |
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| Directed by | Mennan Yapo |
| Written by | Bill Kelly |
| Starring | Sandra Bullock Julian McMahon Nia Long |
| Music by | Klaus Badelt |
| Cinematography | Torsten Lippstock |
| Editing by | Neil Travis |
| Distributed by |  TriStar Pictures MGM Hyde Park Entertainment Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 16, 2007 March 16, 2007 March 16, 2007 |
| Running time | 110 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Official website | |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Premonition is a 2007 drama film directed by Mennan Yapo and starring Sandra Bullock and Julian McMahon. The film was shot at locations throughout Louisiana.
This movie is not based on the 2004 Japanese film Yogen, which also was released with the English title Premonition.
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[edit] Plot
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The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
Linda Hanson (Sandra Bullock) lives the days of a crucial week in her life out of chronological order.
[edit] Prologue
Linda and her husband Jim (Julian McMahon) get out of a car. Linda has her eyes covered, and she tells Jim that she hates surprises. Jim laughs and asks her why she wasn’t angry when he got the promotion, to which she replies that the promotion wasn’t so much a surprise as it was a result of her wonderful husband’s hard work. Jim leads Linda to the front of the house and uncovers her eyes to reveal their new home.
[edit] Thursday
Several years later, Linda is getting out of bed. Her younger daughter, Megan (Shyann McClure), runs into the room and asks where Daddy is. Linda replies lovingly that he will be back today because it was only an overnight trip. Megan asks why they weren’t allowed to go with Daddy, and Linda explains that it was a business trip, so it was better for them to stay at home. Her older daughter, Bridgette (Courtney Taylor Burness) walks in and tells her mother that she has to get up now or else they’ll be late for school.
Linda drops off her kids at school and goes home. She talks a little with her friend Annie (Nia Long), who’s going on a date. She asks how Linda and Jim are, since their relationship had gotten into a rut. Linda goes through various housewife chores: she puts stickers on the sliding glass doors to the back yard; she dusts the counters, and washes some clothes, including a bright rainbow-colored sweater. There’s one new message on the answering machine. The message confuses Linda: it’s from Jim, and he says that he meant everything he said in front of the kids the other night and he wants her to know that he was sincere. He spots a call waiting on his phone and mutters "Is that you?" before hanging up. Linda calls him back and leaves a message.
The doorbell rings and Linda opens the door to a man in a police uniform. He introduces himself as Sheriff Reilly (Marc Macaulay), as apparently neither recognizes the other, and tells Linda that her husband died in a car accident involving a truck on the previous day. She’s in shock, and receives the details of her husband’s death in a blur.
After picking her girls up from school, Linda sadly tells them that their father won’t be coming home. Linda’s mother, Joanne (Kate Nelligan), is over as well and occupies Linda's daughters by helping them complete a puzzle that their Daddy was really good at and was going to help them finish. Meanwhile, Linda calls Annie and asks her to call back. After putting the kids to bed, Joanne comes to sit and talk with her daughter. She tells Linda that although it is difficult, they should start making funeral arrangements and look over Linda and Jim's insurance plans. Linda is shocked and tells her mother that she isn’t ready yet. She tells Joanne that she can’t stop thinking about the serving plate Jim’s family gave them. She had never been able to take it down by herself and Jim had always helped her. Joanne tells her daughter that no one is expecting her to do all this by herself, and she goes to sleep in the guest room. Linda falls asleep in her clothes on the living room couch alone, her wedding photo cradled in her arms.
[edit] Monday
Linda wakes up in her bed, dressed in a flimsy nightgown and covered with sheets and blankets. Somewhat confused, she gets up and knocks on the guest room door. No one is inside. Linda cautiously walks downstairs, where Jim is standing at the counter eating his breakfast. Linda is shocked as she stares at Jim. He asks her what’s wrong, but she can only mutter that she’s had a bad dream. Megan and Bridgette come running down the stairs, with Bridgette once again complaining about being late for school. Jim asks Linda to take the kids to school because he’s late for work and rushes off.
Still in a daze, Linda drops off the kids. As she drives on, she makes an abrupt stop that angers drivers around her, and she is approached by Sheriff Reilly, who warns her to be more careful on the roads. Strangely, the Sheriff acts as if he's never met her before. Linda returns home to her chores, but notices the rainbow sweater again. She walks outside to hang laundered bedsheets. While she tries to spread out a sheet she trips on a toy and falls backwards. She falls onto the dead body of a crow and cuts her hand. Her hand is covered with blood and she runs inside. On her way in, she gets blood all over the glass door (which now has no stickers on it) and on the sink. After she’s regained some of her senses, Linda goes back out wearing rubber gloves and throws the dead animal into the trash. The day ends with a family dinner, the girls reporting a boring day.
[edit] Saturday
Linda wakes up the next day in one of Jim’s work shirts. She notices a bottle of wine and a glass on the nightstand. She can't find Jim in the shower, but finds an empty prescription bottle of lithium with pills scattered in the sink. The label on the bottle states the pills were prescribed by a Doctor Norman Roth. She finds the mirrors in the house covered in sheets while she makes her way downstairs. Still in her husband’s shirt, she encounters a group of family and friends wearing full mourning garb. Annie is there as well, and assures Linda that the kids are safe, they’re just outside. Linda goes running to her kids and finds the two girls on the swing set. Bridgette has her back turned to the camera and when Linda runs over, there are terrible red gashes all over the girl’s face. Linda quickly starts to caress her daughter’s face and asks what happened. Megan walks over and tells her mom that she doesn’t see any scars at all and that her sister looks perfect. Linda is still confused, but agrees for her daughters’ sakes and holds them close.
When they arrive at the church stairs, Linda sends the family inside, walks steadily to the hearse and demands that they open the coffin. The funeral director assures her that everything is on schedule, but tries to stop her from reaching the coffin. Suddenly the coffin falls out of the hearse, opening up and the action suggests that her late husband's head rolls out onto the pavement. Then she screams uncontrollably.
At the burial, a young priest is giving the eulogy for Jim, describing him as a wonderful man who always put his family first. Linda notices a blond woman (Amber Valletta) standing to the side of the funeral group, hiding behind a tree. Neither Joanne nor Linda recognizes the woman, but when Linda walks over, the woman apologizes profusely and tells Linda that she thought it would be okay to come since they’d talked a day earlier. Linda is still confused, but the woman speeds off before Linda can ask her any more questions.
Back at the house, Linda frantically flips through the phone book. The page with Dr. Roth's listing has been torn out, but she soon finds the page in her trashcan. She grabs the page and calls the office, and a recorded message states that the office is only open during weekdays. When she comes back downstairs later, all is well, until the doorbell rings and several very burly men enter the room. One of them introduces himself as Dr. Norman Roth (Peter Stormare) and with him are his assistants and Sheriff Reilly. Annie rushes to get the children to bed as Linda is hauled away kicking and screaming. It seems that they think Linda has mental problems because she cannot seem to remember how the cuts on Bridgette's face happened. For everybody else, the dates have been happening in order, so they know that a few days before, Bridgette crashed through the glass door and Linda took her to the hosiptal, but Linda does not recall any of this. Joanne apologizes, but tells Linda that what she needs right now is serious help.
Linda is taken to a mental health care facility and overhears the sheriff and Dr. Roth talking. The sheriff tells the doctor that he informed Linda of her husband's death on Thursday. The doctor recounts Linda's visit from Tuesday, when she claimed her husband was already dead. Linda is sedated by injection, and fades out.
[edit] Tuesday
Linda wakes up in her own bed again. She can't find a trace of the injection on her arms. She hears a running shower and runs into the bathroom. She goes into the shower, nightgown and all, and holds Jim. At breakfast she is happy to see that Bridgette's face is wound-free. After dropping the girls off at school, she stops in her driveway, and opens the garbage to discover the crow's body inside. Back inside the house she goes through the phone book, finds Dr. Roth's entry, rips out the page and drives to his office. He doesn't recognize her, and initiates a session where she tells him of her experiences of seeing Jim alive and then dead again. At the end of the session he prescribes lithium.
Linda goes on to her husband’s office. She holds him in her arms and asks to speak to him in private. She wants the family to get away for a while, but Jim rejects the idea. There’s a knock on his office door and it’s Claire, the blond girl from the funeral. She’s the company’s new assistant manager and has been working with Jim. The two leave for a meeting, and Linda glimpses that Jim places his hand on the small of Claire's back as they walk away.
Later that night, the children are playing in the front yard, and Linda is in the bathroom considering the lithium. She shakes out two pills at first, then six, but then allows the entire contents to fall into the sink along with the bottle.
Linda recognizes that it's starting to rain and yells down to the girls to hurry to the back yard and grab the sheets from the cloth line. Coming down the stairs, she sees the girls rushing to the back yard. She sees Bridgette running toward the glass doors and urges her to stop. Bridgette can't tell the door is closed and runs through it, breaking the glass and hurting her face and hands. Linda hurries the girls to the emergency room and Jim arrives shortly after. Back at home, Linda puts the girls to bed, covers the mirrors in the house so that Bridgette cannot see her scars, and tells the girls that as far as she's concerned there are no scars, and they're both beautiful, like princesses.
Meanwhile, Jim is busy sweeping up the glass from Bridgette’s fall. He asks her why she hasn’t put the stickers up yet, and Linda says that she thought she had. He tells her that he asked Linda's mother to come live with them until Linda feels better.
Linda walks upstairs, takes off her jacket, and feels the crumpled phone book paper in her back pocket. Mindlessly she throws it in the trash. But the sight of the paper basket triggers her memory and she rushes downstairs and makes a timeline of the week's events. Tuesday is when she meets Dr. Roth for the first time, when her daughter gets the cuts. Thursday is when she gets the news about the accident and her mother stays over. She hasn’t experienced Friday yet, but Saturday is the funeral. She hides the paper under the tablecloth and goes to talk to Jim. She begs him not to go, but seeing that it's no good, requests that "If tomorrow is Wednesday, please, please wake me up before you leave". He promises.
[edit] Friday
Linda wakes up on the living room couch, understands it's Friday and drives to Claire’s house. Linda asks if they should be talking about something regarding Jim. Claire’s swollen and tear covered face tells it all as she asks who told her. Linda is brisk and piercing as she replies that Claire just did.
Linda goes out to talk with Annie. Annie gives her sympathy to Linda, saying that all of this is so terrible – Jim's death, and discovering her husband was planning to have an affair. Linda replies that maybe it isn’t so bad at all. Jim may not have done anything yet, but the affair would have had a destructive impact on their family. She tells Annie that maybe all of this was meant to happen. Annie is surprised, but Linda knows that things are finally coming together for her.
Linda then visits the insurance agent to confirm the stability of her family's future. He tells her that everything is covered for, because Jim came in the morning of his accident and tripled his life insurance plans. Linda is very confused, but thanked him. After making funeral arrangements, Linda drives home and tells her mother that she’s made all the plans. Her mother’s reaction is similar to Annie’s and later that night she goes to talk to her daughter. With a glass of wine at her side and dressed in Jim’s shirt, Linda asks her mother whether, if Linda let Jim die, that would be the same as killing him; but Joanne replied that Jim is already dead, eliciting an enigmatic glare from Linda.
[edit] Sunday
Linda wakes up on the previous Sunday. She sends Jim off with the kids while she drives to the church. There, she speaks with Father Kennedy (Jude Ciccolella) and explains that she’s very scared. He’s surprised to see her, because it’s been a while since she’s been in church. Kennedy has an entire book detailing incidents similar to hers. A woman during the colonial period predicted a terrible storm coming in and destroying the entire town. She was hanged as a witch, and two days later, the town was destroyed by a storm. In a more recent period, a man from the early 1900s saw the gravestones of his two young children in a dream during the influenza pandemic. He went home and shot the children to save them from the pain of the sickness, but the autopsies showed that they were never infected. The man ended up killing himself a week later. Kennedy explains that the faithless are like empty vessels. There’s nothing inside, so they’re more susceptible to greater forces. He says that she must have faith and that life itself can be a miracle. Linda tells Kennedy that she doesn’t believe in miracles, but she desperately needs faith and stability right now and asks him how she can get it. Kennedy tells her that faith is simply the belief in something you can’t see or touch, but you can feel, such as love and hope. She must find something to believe in, something she’s willing to fight for. Linda tearfully tells the father that she doesn’t know what to fight for.
Eventually, Linda visits the site of the accident. She parks her car and stands in the middle of the road. She stares at the "Mile 220" sign, which is where Sheriff Reilly told her the accident took place. Images of her family flash before her eyes as Linda tries to decide what to do. Her thoughts are interrupted by another car passing, and she gets back into her car.
That night, Linda puts pressure on Jim. When the kids go to give their father a goodnight hug, Linda tells them to give him an extra hug and to tell their father how much they love him. Jim hugs the kids back, but doesn’t say anything. Linda asks him why he’s not returning the sentiment and Jim is taken aback. He holds the girls close once again and tells them that he loves them more than anything in the entire world. They ask him if he loves Linda too, and he says he does, which explains the message Jim left on Linda's answering machine.
Jim finds Linda standing in the middle of the yard. Heavy rain is falling, but Linda refuses to budge. Jim joins her shortly and asks her what’s wrong. She starts to tell him that they aren’t the same family any more and she misses that. She wants to return to what they used to be. Jim tells her that they are still that family, that things are just different. Linda starts to cry as a storm starts. A lightning bolt hits the power lines and a dead crow falls to the ground. Jim takes Linda into the house after a rogue powerline heads toward them and they retreat to their room. Jim sighs as he sits down on his bed. Linda walks over and tenderly embraces him as she apologizes for everything, and they make love. Later Jim holds Linda close and she tells him that she’s had a dream where he died. He tells her that it’s just a dream, and that everything will be fine.
[edit] Wednesday
Linda wakes up in her bed once again. Since she can't be sure of what day it is, she grabs the phone and calls Annie, who tells her that it’s definitely Wednesday. Linda runs down the stairs knowing that today is the day of the accident. She finds a note from Jim saying that he’s taking the kids to school and will be back tomorrow. Linda takes off and begins to search for Jim.
Meanwhile, Jim drops the kids off at school, and then goes to the insurance company. He looks worried as he raises the amount of the life insurance. Later, as he makes a turn to get onto the highway, he gets a call from Claire. She’s just arrived in their hotel room and is evidently very excited. A troubled Jim tells her that he can’t go through with the affair, and he hangs up.
Jim then calls the house and leaves the message from the beginning of the film. At the same time, a frantic Linda is trying to reach Jim. After hearing a beep signaling that he has another call, Jim hangs up realizing that it's Linda. He answers the call. The two have a touching reconciliation, Linda smiling asks him to pull over to the shoulder of the road and Jim pulls over. Linda notices that they’ve reached the "Mile 220" sign and tells Jim that if he trusts her, he must turn around. Jim does so, but not before narrowly being missed by a speeding car. He stops the car and is unable to get it started again. Linda notices a fuel truck approaching and she is now hysterical, screaming at Jim to get out of the car. Jim sits and keeps on trying to start the car. Realizing that he's losing time Jim frantically tries to open his car door, but he can't. The truck slams into Jim’s car, crushing its roof and presumably decapitating Jim. The truck then explodes, causing the car to explode also. Linda breaks down and starts to sob uncontrollably.
[edit] Epilogue
The movie ends with Linda back home asleep on a mattress with no sheets, her daughters run in and tell her that the moving truck has arrived. Linda kisses her daughters and comments with a smile that her daughter's scars from the accident are healing well. The girls then leave the room and do not close the door. Linda moves to sit on the edge of the bed when suddenly Father Kennedy's voice runs through her head, saying that every day we’re alive can be a miracle. She smiles slightly, and gets up slowly, exposing a pregnant belly. This time we see the door is closed perhaps suggesting that she has chosen her miracle and that things will now follow a new timeline beginning with her pregnancy of the third child.
The alternate ending shows Linda getting up exactly as she does before. All of a sudden she hears the shower running. She walks slowly to the bathroom, pulls open the shower curtain and the screen goes black.
[edit] Theme
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The primary theme of the film is one of premonition or precognition for the main character. Although Linda experiences the days out of order, the events of each are apparently already determined, whether she has actually experienced them or not. Without consciously attempting to do so, Linda fulfills the necessary preconditions for later days by taking certain actions during earlier days. For example, on Saturday, Linda searches the phone book, attempting to find the phone number for the previously-unknown doctor on the pill bottle she discovers. However, she finds that the page has been torn out and discarded. On Tuesday (which she experiences later, despite it taking place chronologically earlier), she herself tears the page out and throws it away, ensuring that it will later be missing when she looks for it.
Unlike in films such as The Butterfly Effect, Linda is unable to radically reshape the future. Instead, as suggested by a priest who she consults during the film, it is only her interpretation and how she chooses to deal with the events which can change. Another view is that Linda brought about Jim's death in her very effort to prevent it, in the sort of time/causality loop seen in The Terminator.
There are two timelines in the movie. The first is the time that preceded Thursday and the second is the one initiated on Monday. Waking up on Thursday morning Linda is completely lucid, aware of what day it is and expects Jim later in the day. Bridgette hasn't run into the window and it is not broken. She also doesn't know the sheriff. All the other days the movie portrays are mutually consistent. She hangs the sheets on Monday and falls on a crow that dies on Sunday, which she throws away and finds in the garbage on Tuesday. As a consequence of the rain on Tuesday, Bridgette gets hurt while running to retrieve the sheets hung on Monday.
Initially the days leading up to the accident occur in consecutive order with the premonition days occurring out of order. This would explain apparent discrepancies in the "future", such as Bridgette not having facial injuries on Thursday after her accident on Tuesday. However, the movie flashes back to a previous Sunday and fails to adhere to this logic. A special feature on the film's DVD version includes an interview with the director, in which the week's events are discussed as they would have been experienced in normal temporal sequence. No mention is made of discrepancies in this special feature. This could mean that such inconsistencies are endemic to the movie's structure, rendering it essentially incoherent.
A third view would hold that some things in life cannot be altered, but others can. That her actions in the course of the week changed events is indicated by the cuts on her daughter's face, which are present in the epilogue where she is pregnant. She would have taken down the sheets if it weren't for the incident with the crow on Monday, and the urgency of taking down the sheets was why the daughter ran into the window. The crow was also why they went back in the house on Sunday night at the same time, leading to them conceiving the third child. This could be interpreted as an event of divine intervention. Against this interpretation is the fact that they went back into the house not because of the crow, but because of the lightning and rain storm.
A fourth view holds that all the events of the tragedy already occurred at the time of the movie start and the protagonist was "remembering" events out of sequence after receiving hardcore medication.
A pragmatic view of this movie is one of fidelity. This movie teaches that those who are thinking about being unfaithful in a relationship need to assess the damage they will cause after the deed is done. Tied to this idea is that one should tell and show those they love that they love them. One never knows that the love we show to our partner might be just what is needed to keep them faithful.
Another view is that the whole of Thursday was in fact the premonition and all the days that followed were reality as they actually played out albeit in a mixed up order. The premonition (Thursday) could be thought of as a dream and does not necessarily have to be a premonition on everything that happens on the following days. Instead it focuses essentially on her husband's death. This would explain many plot holes such as her eldest daughters face not being scarred, the window not being broken, etc. If we assume this view for the movie, the events of Thursday are not known because it is the only day that is not revealed to us during the course of the movie. The problem with this view is that on Saturday the Sheriff mentions to the doctor that he informed her of the accident on Thursday.
[edit] Cast
- Sandra Bullock - Linda Hanson
- Julian McMahon - Jim Hanson
- Nia Long - Annie
- Kate Nelligan - Joanne
- Amber Valletta - Claire Francis
- Peter Stormare - Dr. Norman Roth
- Marc Macaulay - Sheriff Reilly
- Courtney Taylor Burness - Bridgette Hanson
- Shyann McClure - Megan Hanson
- E.J. Stapleton - Model Home Salesman
[edit] Reception
The film received negative reviews, including an 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with 139 rotten reviews and 12 fresh. Despite the weak reviews, several critics, including Rex Reed, commend Sandra Bullock for her performance.[1]
Premonition opened in third place for the week, behind 300 and Wild Hogs, with a gross of $17,558,689. The film has grossed $47,852,604 in the USA. Worldwide is grossed $83,996,355.
[edit] Plot holes
- When Linda wakes up on Thursday, she knows that her husband is out of town when she should think she is waking up on Sunday- the next chronological day of her life.
- Although her daughter's accident was on Tuesday, her face is unmarked on Thursday, when the movie begins. Also, on Thursday we see Linda putting stickers on the glass door which her daughter smashed on Tuesday.
- Sheriff Reilly informs Linda of her husband's death Thursday morning even though we learn she was right there when it happened on Wednesday. However she wasn't there when it first happened, and, therefore, Linda wouldn't know of the event. Additionally, he doesn't recognize her even though he'd seen her nearly run a red light two days previous.
- The last day in the present timeline ends with Linda committed in an insane asylum and her kids in the custody of her mother. At the end however, the film flashes forward to several months later with no mention of these events or their resolution. But since the day was skipped and the problem was resolved, this may not be true.
- When Linda is committed near the end of the week, one reason presented is the unexplained wounds on her daughter's face. While the cause was, at this point, hidden from the audience to form a sense of mystery, it was found out later on that a mere accident was to blame. For some reason, it seems that no one even considered asking her daughters about the wounds, noticing the broken window that caused them, checking hospital records (if she was taken to the hospital at all), etc.
- At the end of Tuesday, Linda tells Jim to wake her up before he leaves (presumably so she will be ready to save his life on Wednesday). No explanation is given for why Linda couldn't have just stayed up all night ensuring that she would be awake to save Jim on Wednesday.
[edit] References
- ^ Reed, Rex (2007-03-18). I See Sandra Bullock!: Gorgeous star has weird visions in so-so mystery Premonition. The New York Observer. Retrieved on 2007-09-06.
