KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * *
Sandra Bullock's 2006 time travel romantic drama The Lake House didn't fly, so she's giving the genre another stab with this supernatural number, Premonition. Unfortunately, it isn't any less convoluted and illogical than her first attempt.
Linda (Bullock) is a suburban housewife who lives a nice, far from desperate life married to Jim (McMahon) and with two lovely daughters. She spends her days doing laundry, shopping, cleaning up around the house, until one day the local sheriff arrives to tell her Jim has died in a car crash.
And that's when things start getting freaky. Linda wakes the next morning and discovers her husband quietly having breakfast in their kitchen. For the next seven days, Linda relives the week of her husband's death, but the days are out of order. Some days she wakes and he's dead and she is losing her mind, and on other days she wakes and it's one of the days leading up to his death.
The reason for this ghastly premonition has something to do with woman's intuition, and as Linda desperately tries to discover why, she discovers her life isn't quite as perfect as she thinks.
Amid all the to-ing and fro-ing the film loses direction, and it seems even the makers become confused. A lack of continuity makes it even more puzzling - the daughter's facial scars seem to appear and disappear with scant respect for a timeline and Bullock's hair changes during a week in which there was little opportunity to nip out for a cut and colour.
Premonition has an eerie tone to it, but not in the manner intended. It taunts you with the possibility of a complex and clever ending, but it never unfolds. Instead, it takes an unexpectedly disappointing turn in its final act, leaving you wondering if you've missed the point.
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon
Director: Mennan Yapo
Running time: 92 mins
Rating: M, offensive language
Screening: SkyCity, Berkeley and Hoyts
Verdict: A confused mish-mash that steals from Groundhog Day, Memento, and works by director M. Night Shyamalan
