Wiggly Socks Movie Reviews

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

Jim and Linda Hanson have an ordinary marriage, perhaps too ordinary, as it unravels when Linda, a ten years occupant and housekeeper of her husband's chosen house, trotting about her mundane duties of caring for her two daughters, gets a visit from a policeman informing her that her husband died in a car accident a day before while on a business trip.
Shocked, Linda recovers enough to get the girls ready for the tragedy, calls her Mother and her best friend and falls asleep on a couch.

In the morning she wakes up upstairs in her bed. Downstairs, Jim is drinking his coffee. It was all a bad dream.
The morning after Linda's husband is dead again and when she protests that she is not ready for his funeral, and that he is not dead, she is fat first rebuked, then pitied. Dead, alive, dead, alive. The puzzle of time gets tangled as Linda is becoming aware that somehow linear time is no longer with her.

The tension in Linda realization comes from her possible ability to prevent Jim's death. As she starts unraveling all of this, Linda learns things about her marriage that leave her grim. She also learns that her actions will bear serious consequences on her life, and that of her children. Linda attempts to understand and prevent the future by writing down the events of last week in sequences, would that help to change them? And having learned all she had, what is it she is trying to preserve? Or was it all just a bad dream and all was perfect? Why would it be perfect if she had doubts as far back as 10 years?

Time lapses and confusions could provide very good film background, as the much compared Memento, and almost never mentioned The Others, proved. But neither has much to do with Premonition. In Memento the leading character knows about the time problem and he struggles with the management of it, while the audience learns the plot with him. In The Others the heroine has no idea, until the conclusion of the film, where she is trapped, she just tries living and waiting. Linda is confused by time while discovering past that she might, or might not, change to some degree. Which is where it falls apart.

The pieces don't really fit together, the explanations are lacking in reason, the shrink and the priest are odd additions- what is it she is supposed to believe in, and if that something is beyond herself why would it tests her? In Groundhog Day we know, and the character slowly learns, why he is trapped, Linda's journey is not really interesting because it seems not to be about her. The more you ask, the less you will find out.

There are visuals to help the film, the house, Bullock's close ups, the camera work and the predictable funeral mourners with the mysterious woman standing way behind, as well as the blasting car. There is capable Sandra Bullock, with down the earth acting, perhaps not the best choice for prolonged mystery, and McMahon oddly bland delivery. True, he has little to say and his character is the proverbial stick figure of suburban husband prototype bored by middle age.

Physicist Dean Radin (Senior Parapsychologist of the Institute of Noetic Sciences) was consultant on this film and explained that precognition might work in two ways: one is to change the future course of events, the other in infinite numbers of outcome. Dr. Richard Broughton of the University of Northampton was the consulting parapsychologist who explains premonition as a type of sixth sense, a sensor of future.

Perhaps consulting a scriptwriter would have been a better investment. Just a premonition.

Directed by:Mennan Yapo,Screenplay: Bill Kelly,Cast: Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, Nia Long, Kate Nelligan, Amber Valletta, Peter Stormare, Courtney Taylor Burness, Shyann McClure; Camera: Torsten Lippstock;Editing: Neil Travis; Music:Klaus Badelt;