Release Date: 9 June 2005


Synopsis :

While driving blissfully through the countryside with his wife and daughter, Hideki Satomi stops at a phone booth to send an email. There he discovers a scrap of newsprint with his daughter’s picture on it, and an article describing her death in a traffic accident. With a sense of horrible premonition and foreboding, he witnesses the terrifying automobile collision that had been accurately described in the article. The grieving father becomes obsessed with uncovering the mystery of the newspaper.

Three years later, Satomi has not recovered from his failure to prevent the accident that killed his daughter and subsequently destroyed his marriage. Although he tries to cling to sanity, he’s haunted by spectral visions of newspapers foretelling calamitous events in his community. When he receives yet another mysterious newspaper with an article predicting the horrific death of a young student, he vows to do everything to save her from the deadly prediction foretelling her death, and thereby saves himself.

Movie Review:

Ask yourself hypothetically: “What if one day you possess the ability to predict future events”? Will you try in vein to prevent the calamaties from happening then? Or in retrospect by doing so does it really change the events.

“Premonition” revolves itself around these mind-boggling questions. Though the poster might give you the impression that it is yet another horror movie. But by simply assuming this to be a horror genre will leave you walking out of the hall greatly disappointed. Satomi is a college teacher who came upon a mysterious paper (who conveniently appeared out of nowhere and dissolved into thin air after being read) that predicted his daughter’s death in an automobile accident seconds before it happened. Three years later, Satomi is still unable to get over the mysterious paper which in turn may result in saving her daughter’s live in time. Now at this junction, after the griping opening, the pace of the movie seem to take a more relaxed turn. As expected, Satomi and his now ex-wife (Noriko Sakai in a rather subdued role) decides to go deeper into researching the mysterious paper in the tradition of “The Ring” (It’s a videotape if you can recall). Psychic, writer, mental patients are traced along the way to delve deeper into the fox’s hole. Unfortunately it’s one dead end after the other.

Technically, the sound effects are pretty chilling at moments, if you are expecting the usual jump scares, “Premonition” fares on the rather mild side. In fact, the movie on the whole is pretty solemn and gives the impression it’s shot on a pretty tight budget as compared to other Japanese horror gems such as “The Ring” and “Ju-On”.

A lot of questions are being asked and sadly the movie never really offers any insights to the origins of the terror of the eerie piece of floating newspaper. The suspense is cleverly built at the beginning, regrettably it’s the conclusion that caused it to fall into typical, hazy territory.

For the record, if you were to ask me whether I would like this power of premonition, I will be glad to decline although predicting future years of movies box-office results isn’t so bad after all.

Movie Rating: C+

Review by Linus.T.