Premonition (2007)

(In French, On TV, August 2015)  There may have been something interesting at the core of Premonition’s premise; a woman experiencing flashes of her life a week later, after a number of mishaps and a fatal accident involving her husband.  But as she tries to understand what’s going on without driving herself crazy, the film somehow manages to squander a lot of that potential.  There’s a bit of mystery, sure, but the process of discovering what’s happening takes too long and frustrates more than it fascinates.  Sandra Bullock isn’t too bad in the lead role –unfortunately, there’s not much to the film for her to do.  Alas, the film occasionally dips into so-terrible-it’s-funny territory, first with a macabre decapitated-head sequence (tastefully shot, but there’s no mistaking what’s happening) and then with an ending that seems so ill-conceived that it strains credulity. (Nice job fixing it, hero!) That terrible ending is pretty much the final nail in Premonition’s coffin –it’s one thing to be dull (no one will remember the film, but that may be OK considering the alternative) but ending on that kind of overblown dramatic note is the kind of thing fit to any anyone remember Premonition as a bad one.  (Great poster, though!)