Creepy Feelings

Sandra Bullock, Julian McMahon, and Shyann McLure star in a film written by Bill Kelly and directed by Mennan Yapo.

Maybe some of you saw the name Sandra Bullock attached to this time-traveling thriller and suddenly had dark suspicions. Your assumption is not what we philosophers would call a “premonition.” In fact, it’s a logical deduction based on empirical evidence from the actress’s own career. Case in point: Bullock draws down $15 million a pic for junk like Miss Congeniality or Speed numbers one and two. Besides her fluke great performance as Harper Lee in the second Truman Capote film Infamous (which nobody saw), she’s become one of those bellwethers of mediocrity like Ice Cube or Demi Moore.

Premonition is a film that yields nothing but bad Twilight Zone premises. It’s allegedly about death and adultery but not in a feel-bad way. That’s because the screenwriter has exploited that new refuge of boring talents: Let your characters drift back and forth through time. It’s fun! And it requires no heavy machinery.

In the first segment, Linda (Bullock) learns her about-to-cheat husband has died in a car crash while she was tending to everyday suburban housewife activities. Already we know this is a make-believe universe. A middle-class wife who can stay home? Puh-leese. After swallowing that whopper, it’s easier to accept the fact that every time Linda wakes up, she’s in a new part of the story (like Babel without the good cinematography) and her husband is sometimes dead and other times boring. Finally, exhausting psychiatry and friends, she turns to a priest, who has no problem negotiating chronological impairments or handling Linda’s peevishness about her husband’s selfish expiration. Maybe it was God all along plunging her into a maelstrom of time/space paradoxes that would make Einstein slaphappy. You think? The director didn’t.

If you’ve got a bad feeling about where this is all heading, I say trust your gut. Bullock’s star power means no dark corner will remain un-cheerful for very long. And director Mennan Yapo clearly dreams of becoming the next M. Night Shyamalan. But I have a strange feeling, call it a sixth sense, you won’t agree.