PREMONITION (2007)

[ulthar]

I DID like this movie for what it was, but felt it goes under Bad Movies for one simple fact: it broke its own rules.

I've read some of the discussion of plot holes, and my wife and I discussed some of this at great length.  We came up with three separate theories, each of which explain PART of the plot points.  The problem is that for each of these theories, other plot points completely invalidate the theory.

I think this movie could have been SO MUCH MORE.  If the director had picked one path and stuck to it, that is, made the movie internally consistent to its own set of rules, it could have been a phenomenal flick instead of just "interesting, but just okay."

We are goint to watch the commentary tomorrow to see what that brings....

****SPOILERS*****







Our three theories were:

(1) That Linda was actually living the days out of order, but everyone else was living them IN order.  Personally, I think this is the coolest idea the film presented.  This is suggested by things she did not notice on Thursday (so did not happen earlier), such as the pills in the sink.  But, the Doc knew her on Saturday and knew of his visit with her on Tuesday, so then when she lives Tuesday, she gets the pills and spills them.  This theory is invalidated by the yellow pages page torn out as but one example.  The cuts (and Mom not knowing about them) are another of course.


(2) Linda was living the days out of order, and so were everyone else; that is, stuff did not happen in ANYONE"s universe until Linda experienced it, out of order.  This can account for inconsistencies from Monday and Thursday, because Monday actually happens AFTER Thursday.  The dead crow is an example of a violation of this theory.

(3) Things happen in order, but Linda is mentally messed up.  Dumping pills down the sink on Tuesday and just discovering them on Saturday don't sit well with this one.  At least JIM would have probably noticed them on Tuesday and cleaned them up.

There is no theory that would could come up with that helps with the face cuts/broken glass.  Man, that was a major screw-up.  I mean, the cuts are not there on Thursday, they ARE there on Friday, they happened on Tuesday, the Mom did not know about them on Saturday (Jim called her on Tuesday), etc.

Not a BAD, unbearable 'what's going on" fare, but it could have been sooooo much better.

[ulthar]

No takers, eh?

That's fine.  We started to watch the director's + Sandra Bullock's commentary on the DVD and, well, gave it up.  It seems like the director, Mennan Yapo, REALLY did not know what he was doing - at least with respect to story.  I swear, this film reads to me like a series of gimmicks and plot tricks with absolutely no uniting, cohesive element holding it all together.  As I said, it failed to define its own universe and adhere to those rules.

There is one shot in the Thursday sequence in which Sandra Bullock's character Linda pauses to look at herself in the mirror.  We thought this was significant because later in the film, on Tuesday (two days earlier), we Linda covering all the mirrors in the house.

Uh, but it turns out Yapo did not even know why Bullock did this, and she said it was just one of those things where, like, a woman checks herself out in the mirror.

Excuse me?  Major plot point and quite significant visual clue to the story, and it just happened by chance and neither commented on why it is important (or inconsistent with what we learn later)?

Wow.  Just wow.

Another point completely overlooked is how we see her making out her grocery list on Thursday, and on Monday (three days before), the list is on the fridge and she goes to the store to buy the stuff.

Again, no word from the film makers on how all this is supposed to fit in.

Okay, so watch this one for a fun "what the heck" time, but don't expect it to resonate as hard as say Donnie Darko on the time warp aspect.