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I've gotten back into the habit of watching movies lately, since I saw 300, and I saw a preview for this movie called Premonition there. So, I thought, why not. I might do this again, since I saw another preview for a movie that I liked. For those of you who are wondering, I get pirated copies of movies sometimes, and whoever does it includes the previews as a separate file, for whatever reason. It's weird, but I'm not complaining.

Okay, first, the Plot.

The plot itself is very good. The movie starts out with a woman who gets the news that her husband has died. The days of the week are important here. She finds out on a Thursday that the guy died. It happened the day before, on a Wednesday. The next day is Monday, and the woman (Sandra Bullock) is surprised to find that her husband is, in fact, alive. She thinks maybe she dreamt it all, but her facial expressions are very good. She remembers things too well, and there was too much information from the previous day for her to openly dismiss it. Still, she thinks, maybe things are going to be fine. The third day (I think) is Saturday. The day of the funeral. People tell her that her husband is dead once more, and Sandra starts to flip out a little. There's a scene in front of the church that is a little weird. Sandra discovers a bottle of valium prescribed by Dr. Norman Roth (who is played by a guy that looks like a meat butcher) and when Sandra tries to contact the Doctor (because she doesn't remember when the medicene was given to her), the Doctor isn't in his office. Well, it's a Saturday. Nevermind. Except, at the end of the day, the Doctor comes by Sandra's house and has her committed. The Doctor is saying (at the sanitarium) that Sandra came to him Tuesday (which Sandra overhears in the hallway) and told him that her husband was going to die. Except that he died the next day. So the Doctor thinks maybe Sandra has multiple personalities or something major wrong, that maybe she was the one who killed him. Sandra gets an injection of something while strapped to a bed and then she wakes up at home. It's Tuesday, and the husband, Jim, is alive again. So by now Sandra knows that something really weird is going on, and she starts sounding like she's going crazy while she's talking to other people, even though, to her, these things seem rational enough. Here is where the movie starts to reveal its true intentions. Sandra finds the Doctor's phone number and goes into his office. She tells him about the whole situation, even though this is the same guy who put her in an insane asylum. I mean, logically, if she knew that this guy would, at some time in the future, have her committed, wouldn't avoidance be natural? Yet it seems that Sandra is not in control of her actions, and the point here is how much she can learn from what happens, not if she can change anything. The problem, of course, is that the shifting days seems to imply that things can be changed, that the entire reason why this is happening to her is so she can stop her husband from being killed. The next day, I believe is Sunday, and Sandra has learned by now that the reason Jim went on his business trip is to cheat on her with someone from work. She tries to tell Jim about the things to will happen, but only infers them. She doesn't come out and say, "Okay, you're gonna die in three days." Maybe she has this fear that people will try and commit her again. Anyway, the day after that is Wednesday, and bam! Nope, he still dies. Sandra is there to see it happen, and her attempt to stop it from happening actually cause it. After that, it's maybe a few months down the road, and the scene that happened earlier where Sandra was talking to a priest happens and he says, for I think the third time, "Every day you live can be a miracle." And Sandra is pregnant. So, the movie was more or less two hours of a lesson. I think if people want to learn something, they go to school, yes?

Characterization

Sandra- Don't know what her character's name is. They don't say it very often. She's mostly by herself, thinking. It's funny that she has entire days where she can try and figure this out for herself and no other solutions occur to her. In the movie, "Deja Vu," there was an appearance that things could be changed, but they way they did it was that everything had already happened, and the people were merely observing the events. The ending of that movie, however, is much more hopeful, because the one of the things that the characters are trying to stop- the destruction of a ship at port- is actually stopped. Things are changed. But, for Sandra, she can't change anything. Instead, all she can do is sit back and learn. What is the point of learning if you can't do anything with it, though? She did a very good job with her character, her performance was outstanding, but the script and the director and whoever put this movie together didn't seem to realize that people would be disappointed by the ending.

Jim- There's not much to him, since he's alive for only half of the movie. He's more or less your average husband, more concerned with work than home, letting his morals wander off so that he can do whatever he damn well pleases. The only scene where he doesn't appear with Sandra around is maybe a 30 second thing where they show him going to the insurance agency to triple his death coverage.

Dr. Norman Roth- Like I said, this guy looks like a butcher. He's unshaven, and he's old. His hair looks weird too. There's just something about this guy that isn't right. Moreover, what he doesn't say is more important than what he does say. He is never honest at any time, and I guess he could represent the whole of society and their messed up standards forcing their way into everyone's lives.

The Priest- Played the guy who was the Chief of Staff on 24 for a few seasons. He's the smartest guy in the movie, which is indicative of the Christian morality the movie tries to express. Namely that people don't have control over their lives (God does) and that people suffer through so much only to learn something they can never really use. If the days were gone through linear-style, like normal, then the things that happened would not be controllable. Yet, there is a sense in the movie that the weird order of the days is not by accident, but rather is some chance or intention going on. The Priest is the denial of free will, even though he expresses that people should fight for what they care about.

The two daughters- One of them has to have stitches during the movie because she breaks her face on a pane of glass. It's another one of those things where Sandra goes "I don't remember this," and the people around her get very worried. The daughters appear with her at the end of the movie, which sort of begs the biggest question that the movie might not have intended. If, at the final day of the week, which was a Saturday, Sandra was committed, why is she at home and moving out with her kids? Wouldn't it be logical for her to still be committed? Ah, but maybe at the end of the cycle, which was for Sandra, a Wednesday, she did learn something and then the next days, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, would have been different. The inference is there, if you think about, but the movie doesn't really show that anything has changed. It may have been enough for them to say, "This all happened to keep you from being in the asylum," or something like that. The movie's disappointment is present when they try to tell rather than show, which is usually the mark of a bad storyteller. The best novels will always show you events and infer a lesson, but it is up to you to learn it.

Conclusion

If you are really set on this movie, I would recommend getting a pirate copy like I did or waiting for DVD. If you see this on the big screen, you will be like, "Wtf? Come on now."

I'll be doing the movie "Next" (inspired by a Philip K. d**k story) if I get around to seeing it.

300 is basically 2 hours of the Spartans kicking a**. I liked it, and most seem to as well.

Premonition wasn't that confusing, I sometimes felt myself thinking that Sandra Bullock should have done or done that, it's just the ending isn't what you would expect. Now that I've had time to think on it, though, that's not really a bad thing.