By Steve Biodrowski

This is another one of the many effective Japanese horror films to emerge in the wake or RINGU (1998); in fact, it even has the same producer, Taka Ichise. However, it is substantially different from its predecessors: the source of fear is not a dark-haired female ghost but a supernatural newspaper that reveals grisly headlines before the events happen -- and extracts a terrible revenge on those who prevent the events from happening. In effect, it bears a slight similarity to the FINAL DESTINATION films (which also dealt with the consequences of cheating a horrible fate), but PREMONITION's handling of the idea is more sophisticated, relying on anticipation and suspense rather than a series of crude shocks.

As in most Asian horror films, the past ways heavily on the present. In this case, however, a horrible murder is not the impetus behind the plot but an awful accident. The pre-credits sequence is a shocking stand-out, in which a father gets a glimpse of the fateful newspaper, which headlines the death of his daughter in a car accident, just seconds before a big-rig truck plows into the car, which then goes up in a spectacular explosion. As effective as the scene is technically, its true impact is in jolting the viewer with a sense of helplessness and tragic loss.

The film jumps ahead three years to show the husband and wife now divorced. Unfortunately, the script, based on a manga, seems to have trouble expanding the story to feature length, and the film begins to wander. The man goes about his life with an aversion to newspapers; his ex-wife does research into psychic phenomena; more mysterious headlines foretell other tragic occurrences.

After awhile, viewers start to wonder: what is the plot? Eventually, it emerges that the ex-wife is trying to confirm her former husband's claim that he saw the daughter's death foretold in a newspaper. But this is hardly satisfactory, since it won't really accomplish anything; their daughter will still be dead.

Finally, in the last third, the film picks up some steam when it lays out the problem: those who see the headlines can indeed prevent them from coming to pass, but they must pay a terrible price. Although the "newspaper of horror" (as it is called in the English subtitles) is never explained, there are hints that it originates from some mystical place in the universe where all events, past and present and future, co-exist.

This provides an opportunity for a slightly confusing but ultimately satisfying climax in which our everyman hero becomes "unstuck" in time, jumping into several flashbacks and ultimately returning full circle to the tragedy that began the film, which is then replayed in several variations while he tries to intervene but finds himself only altering the tragedy, not preventing it...

Director Tsurata does a fine job with the horror and suspense scenes; except for the spectacle at the beginning and end, his approach is generally a low-key one, closer to Hideo Nakata in RINGU than to Takashi Shimizu in JU-ON. He really knows how to set-up a camera angle so that you wait in dread for the newspaper to appear in a dark empty corner of the frame -- and when it does, you jump all the higher for having anticipated the appearance.

Unfortunately, he is a little bit too long-winded with the dramatic sections of the film. The attempt to create a melodrama about a marriage destroyed by the tragic loss of a child is only partly successful, because the middle section of the film wanders too much without really going anywhere. (A serial killer even pops up briefly, just to remind us that this is indeed a horror-thriller, not a character piece.)

The special effects and makeup are kept to a minimum -- subtle but effective. Typical of the genre, gore is barely visible, except for one brief vision of a train wreck victim's ghost, minus her face (sort of an exaggerated version of Yoko missing her jaw in THE GRUDGE).

The actors are solid. Hideki Satomi initially seems too non-descript to carry a film, but this plays into the story's attempt to cast him as an everyman thrust into an extraordinary situation; his performance draws us in throughout the film, hitting all the right notes, from terrified to tragic, along the way. Little Hana Inoue, who plays his daughter, also deserves kudos.

PREMONITION is not another masterpiece like JU-ON or RINGU, but it is an effective piece of horror entertainment. Although the middle section is weak (the film feels like a short story idea padded to feature length), the highlights at the beginning and ending are more than enough to make it worthwhile viewing.

DVD DETAILS

Lions Gate's American DVD of PREMONITION offers the film in its original Japanese language, with optional English subtitles (unfortunately, printed on the image rather than the black letterbox bar at the bottom of the screen).

There are several extras, divided into three categories: Interviews, The Making of PREMONITION, Press Conference, and Special Effects.

The Interviews (of the director and the lead cast) are mostly press junket, talking-head stuff, not too informative but occasionally amusing. Perhaps the highlight is director Tsurata admitting that his approach to directing horror used to involve showing less; but in PREMONITION he opted to show a bit more, because he felt he was competing with Takashi Shimizu.

The Making of section is divided into vignettes devoted to several key sequences in the film (the crash, etc). These are not really true documentaries: they are essentially behind-the-scenes footage showing the cast and crew at work, with only a bare minimum of interviews or narration to explain what is happening. Still, they provide some interesting glimpses of the work that went into making the film, not just technically but artistically, particularly in terms of working with the actors to extract convincing performances as they encounter the supernatural horrors thrown at them.

The Press Junket is self-explanatory: a videotape of the producer, director and cast talking to the press about halfway through filming. Unfortunately, at this point in the production, no one has anything particularly insightful to say about the film because they are too deep in the middle of it, with the end of shooting barely in sight.

Saving the best for last, the Special Effects bonus feature provides a truly informative and entertaining look at what went into the variations of the crash sequence. Because it is hard to get permits to close down real streets, the scene was shot on an airport runway dressed up to look like a road. The car crash was filmed live, with a real truck running over a real car; computer-generated enhancement was added latter, to provide smoke and shattering glass. A large greenscreen backdrop was used on location to composite one victim into the shot: the real actress hops out of screen when she is supposed to be run over, while her stunt double is rigged on wires and actually hit by the truck (moving at slow speed and with padding on front of course).

One other note: there seems to be some discrepancy between the subtitles on the film itself and the subtitles on the bonus features. For example, in the movie, the newspaper that foretells the future is called "newspaper of horror"; in the interviews, it is called "fear newspaper."

TRIVIA

In 2007, Sandra Bullock starred in another film titled PREMONITION. Although not a remake, the film has a vaguely similar premise. Bullock plays a wife whose husband dies in an accident - except her epxerience of the death turns out to be a premonition. Throughout the film, her character jumps back in forth in time, rather like the unfortunate husband in the last act of the Japanese film. You can read a review of the American film here.