Premonition (2007)

If there were an Oscar given out for poster art, the first one-sheets for Premonition would have been shoo-ins. These ads were not yet emblazoned with the haunted visage of Sandra Bullock, but they did offer up a face -- a face constructed minimally and memorably from bare tree branches. Alas, this stark design was no premonition of what we'd get from Premonition. It's not that the mood isn't there -- director Mennan Yapo and screenwriter Bill Kelly go a lot darker than might be expected with Bullock as the star. Kelly does a decent job keeping track of which information he divulges at which times, so that at least the non-chronological narrative plays by its own rules. The problem is that those rules don't make much sense. Why is Bullock's Linda Hanson living the days surrounding her husband's death out of sequence? Is she crazy? Or is she just caught in a series of conundrums that exists merely for the sake of a clever script? It's risky to legislate the logic of time travel/future sight, but as with most well-worn devices, there are guidelines that cause a viewer either to suspend disbelief, or just to disbelieve. It's possible to sit there and watch the days of Linda's life being shuffled like a deck, to marvel at the basic skill in how it's being executed, and to still find yourself asking, "Well, so what?" One complicating factor is that viewers never quite know if they want her to succeed in saving her husband. It's a good nod toward realism that Julian McMahon hasn't been her perfect spouse, but perhaps Premonition needed less ambiguity in order for viewers to feel emotionally invested in it. Maybe it could have taken the poster's white sky and dark tree branches as an example how to be more black and white. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide