Premonition

A depressed housewife learns her husband was killed in a car accident the day previously, awakens the next morning to find him alive and well at home, and then awakens the next day after to a world in which he is still dead.

Premonition is Memento Lite, confusing in a maze of when-did-this-happen vs. how crazy is she? What aids the chronology is Sandra Bullock, who plays this role as if it's her last. If we decide that question on the worth of this project, the answer would be yes.

Yesterday, as I was on a walk around the lake with a friend, we discussed the plot points. "But he died on Wednesday..." "No, he died on Tuesday. She didn't hear about it until Wednesday." "No, I'm pretty sure she didn't hear until Thursday, and the funeral was Saturday..."

The most dramatic scene in the movie is when she whips out a piece of construction paper, and with crayons in hand, draws a calendar. It doesn't help us to understand this mess. What's even more important, she finds the paper on another day, this time BEFORE she had drawn it, a careless continuity error.

Director Mennan Yapo seems more involved with lighting and dramatic effect rather than advancement of the story. In fact, on the DVD extras, he comments incessantly on how the scene looked rather than what they were trying to convey.

At the end we have a story that doesn't go anywhere. If you have a Sixth Sense kind of look and story, you need a great, big payoff at the end. There is no payoff here.

Again, going back to the DVD extras, an alternate ending is shown. That ending might have given us a little wonderment factor -- there is none in the movie's ending -- but still makes no sense.

The acting is fine. It's great to see Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck, Fantastic Four) in something normal. And the great Kate Nelligan has little to do here; it seems her best scenes, as small as they were, were cut by the director.

This is a dreary suspense film with little suspense. Bullock has had quite a succession of worthy films, but strikes out with this dud. Thumb's down.