Premonition

Her reality is broken further when she receives the news that her husband has been killed in a car accident. But when she wakes up the next morning, he is alive. Naturally, she assumes it was all a dream. But when Jim dies again, and is subsequently found to be alive the next day, Linda must struggle to save her family from both time and fate.

Director Mennan Yapo leads Bullock on a journey straight out of the speculative fiction genre. The idea of these “premonitions,” these days where Bullock’s character seems to see the future, or future possibilities, perhaps, is pretty unique in terms of Hollywood storytelling.

But the story took its toll on Bullock. She said: “I had a really hard time and I take great pleasure in saying I thought I was going to lose it. I went to the director and said, ‘I’m having a hard time. I don’t know what to do.’ And the smile on his face when he heard that, ‘No, that’s exactly where you need to be.’” The intensity of the character and story, the grief that the character experienced, almost became too real for Bullock.

From a critical point of view, however, the movie does not hold up. The general critical analysis is that this was not a good film. But the message, that of freeing yourself from the bondage of normalcy, of doing something different, making changes in your life, is solid. It’s nothing new, but put in the context of a speculative thriller, it gains a new perspective.