This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
A Glass Half Full
Plot Overview
Jim Hanson (Julian McMahon) and his wife Linda (Sandra Bullock) had a happy wedding. Then Jim got a promotion and they moved to a big house (“It's a classic”) in the suburbs. They now have two young schoolgirls (Shyann McClure & Courtney Taylor Burness) with plenty of yard to play in. Their life together, though, has devolved into a dry routine where every day is the same as every other one. The biggest thing on Jim's plate these days is the fetching new assistant manager Claire Francis (Amber Valletta) who appreciates his showing her the ropes. He takes off on a business trip. “When is daddy coming home?” one of the girls asks her mom. “Today. It was just an overnight trip,” she replies.
Instead of dad at the door it's Sheriff Reilly (Marc Macaulay) with some bad news of the worst kind. For what it's worth, he assures her it was instantaneous. She numbly informs the girls their dad is not coming back, ever. Linda's mother Joanne (Kate Nelligan) and her best friend Annie (Nia Long) come by to console her and mind the girls.
The next morning when she
discovers her husband downstairs alive and well—though
distracted as usual—she passes her earlier experience off as
a bad dream. But when she awakes the following day to a house full
of mourners, she emphatically states, “Something is really,
really wrong.” She is stuck on a repeat day cycle, and her friends
and family soon hand her off to professional help.
Ideology
Have you ever heard of the phenomenon called the Mandela Effect? Some people claim they remember the passing away of black South African celebrity Nelson Mandela back in the 1980s after which he was still walking around for years to come. They'd seen his earlier funeral on TV. However, there had been another black African leader who died about then, whose death was well publicized. I figure they mixed up the two; to some people all blacks look alike.
Not so, they insisted. The super collider at Cern had opened up a portal to another dimension, and alternate realities were impinging on ours. Occam's razor tells us not to multiply variables but to accept the simplest explanation. In this case it would be a mental mixup, common enough.
Soon people were applying the Mandela effect to brand names and jingles being slightly different from their memories of them. Of course, logos get tweaked all the time, no big deal. Some of the product placements in “Premonition” might even reflect this—I don't keep up on it all.
The scariest one is the supposed interdimensional meddling with our King James Bible. Now, instead of the lion lying down with the lamb, as everyone remembers, it's the wolf and the lamb. See (Isaiah 11:6) “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” However, these lion memories aren't from formal memorization but were picked up who knows where from the many artists' renderings of a pleasant picture. The language of the Apocrypha confirms the KJV: (Sirach 13:17) “What fellowship hath the wolf with the lamb?”
In “Premonition” Linda actually has her children (lambs) give their cheating daddy (wolf) extra hugs. And when she visits Claire for a tête-à-tête, the door-knocker is in the shape of a lion's head. But enough of this nonsense.
H.W. Fowler's dictionary discusses Misquotation.
when a quotation comes from such a source as … the Bible …, to give it wrongly at least requires excuse, & any great prevalence of such misquotation would prove us discreditably ignorant of our own literature. … that their accuracy is sure to be taken for granted unless occasional attempts like the present are made to draw attention to them.
[Prov. 16:18] “Pride goeth before destruction, & an haughty spirit before a fall.” (not pride before a fall).
This proverb puts the finger on the proximate cause of both the girl Bridgette's and her dad Jim's accidents in the movie. Bridgette and her sister Megan were accustomed to playing hopscotch type games attended with children's prideful chants. When their mom sent them running outside, she told Bridgette to stop before she collided with the window. Bridgette turned her head but not her whole body and ended up destroying her princess good looks … for a time. Jim and Claire were haughty, that is aloof from the man's family obligations. Linda did get him to change his mind about it, but he still was stuck with seeing Claire daily in the office environment until someone got reassigned, and he didn't even reschedule the interview they were doing together out of town. In the meantime he made a U-turn on the highway without looking first, like he owned the highway. Big mistake. Someone's head will roll.
In its simplest form, the movie follows this line: At the funeral on Saturday (and perhaps every Sunday), a young priest (Matt Moore) leads the prayer: (Matt. 6:9-10) “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” This gives God in heaven an invitation to intervene in our earthly time-bound realm. It's a standard prayer that would be offered at Jim's funeral no matter when he dies, sooner or later.
Then earlier, on Sunday, the beginning of this week lived by Linda with days out of sequence, she receives counsel from Father Kennedy (Jude Ciccolella) saying:
Father Kennedy: “You see, history's full of unexplained phenomena. Nobody knows why. Some people thought they suffered from what the ancients called ‘Blasphemare absens fides’: The dangers of the faithless.”
Linda Hanson: “The faithless?”
Father Kennedy: “It's the notion that nature abhors a vacuum, even a spiritual one. People who've lost their beliefs, they're like empty vessels, more susceptible to having their lives taken over by forces bigger than themselves.”
Linda Hanson: “Almost like a curse.”
Father Kennedy: “Or a miracle.”
Linda Hanson: “Yeah, well, I don't believe in miracles.”
Father Kennedy: “Every day we're alive can be a miracle, Linda.”
Linda Hanson: “Well, it doesn't feel that way. Not that way. Father, something bad is going to happen. I need your ... I need your help. I need your direction. I need faith.”
Father Kennedy: “Faith is just believing in something beyond yourself, something you can't feel, or smell, or touch ... like hope or love.”
Linda Hanson: “I believe I've let all that go.”
Father Kennedy: “Maybe you should try and get it back again, huh?”
Linda Hanson: “But if it's too late—”
Father Kennedy: “It's never too late to realize what's important in your life, to fight for it.”
Linda Hanson: “I don't know what to fight for.”
These are lessons from history, which Father Kennedy reads from books: applicable no matter where we are in the current week.
Later in the day she makes a serious effort to fight for her family's togetherness, driven by what she's learned from five later days she's already lived. But all she admits to is a bad dream that her husband will die. A woman's intuition might give her that regardless of special intervention. She has an intuitive glimpse of a bit of the future depicted on-screen with washed-out colors as were used for her flashbacks. There eventually occurs the only independent portent in the whole movie: metal attracts lightning and the line transformer by their house gets struck killing a crow. These transformers are filled with transformer oil—for cooling—and provide 220 V. electricity for the house. Jim's car is going to get struck by a tanker truck on milepost 220 later in the week. This warning sign hits both Jim and Linda.
The rest of the seeming “premonitions” are the results of Linda living her weekdays out of order due to the jolt from the lightning. Since every day is similar to every other day, they start out looking normal. The differences—and they are major—are the effects of the causes Linda will precipitate on earlier days she has yet to cycle through. The causes can't be shown yet in enough detail to influence her who is to produce them, not without violating her free will, so some of the effects will seem to come out of the blue. It sounds pretty weird, but it's the simplest explanation I can come up with: written history, a standard prayer, and an intuitive resolve, followed by a bolt of lightning and a week out of whack.
Production Values
“” (2007) was directed by Mennan Yapo. The screenplay was written by Bill Kelly. It stars Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, and Amber Valletta. Bullock played so well a woman living a nightmare that I felt like asking her what she's doing? these aren't her normal roles. Julian McMahon is such a deadhead dad I felt like trying to shake some sense into him. The movie was so crazy that when we get to Peter Stormare playing the psychiatrist, he seemed such a real deal that I almost wanted to sign up for a session with him myself. All the acting was uncommonly good, even from the children.
MPAA rated it PG–13 for some violent content, disturbing images, thematic material and brief language. The musical score left something to be desired. The location and sets were perfect. It was technically well shot and edited.
Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation
Despite the woo-woo factor this one is more about dealing with family crisis than the supernatural. A routine prayer, a lighting bolt, and a discombobulated week aren't so much a strain on credulity, not in the movies. It's a rather enjoyable picture.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Special effects: Well done special effects. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Apocryphal scripture taken from The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. U.S.A.: Hendrickson Pub. Originally published by Samuel Bagster & Sons, Ltd., London, 1851. Print, WEB.
Fowler, H.W., A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. USA. Oxford UP. 1926–1946. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org