Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21001 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-06-26
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Customer Reviews

Good thriller average horror
This is a good/average horror from asia.I am a big asia film fan but i must say that i thought that there was'nt enough horror for my liking but saying that it is a good thriller.I say that because there are a couple of jumpy bits but i could not call this an out and out horror,so maybe i should say its a suspense type of film.All in all a good film but not in the league of ring or the grudge.

Doesn't really fulfil its potential
This is a worthy enough addition to the J-Horror sub-genre and in theory there isn't actually anything particularly bad about it; but, all the same, I couldn't help coming away from it with a sense of disappointment. Thinking about it, I suspect my disappointment stems from the fact that Premonition, as a horror movie, just isn't frightening enough. There are so many moments during the film when the horrific elements could have lifted it to the genuinely disturbing levels of other, more famous Asian horrors (such as Ringu, Ju-on and Tale of Two Sisters) but the director seems unwilling to allow the horrors their full due. Don't misunderstand me - reticence is a worthy aim in a horror film; but there is a difference between suggesting horrors in order to get the audience's imagination working and actually showing those horrors in such a half-hearted manner that the viewer wonders why they bothered. There is one brief scene towards the end of the film - when our protagonist encounters the crawling inhabitant of a cell in a psychiatric institute - that almost reaches the heights of terror expressed in those other films I've mentioned, but it is very much the exception. At the end of the day, however well-made, acted and written the film is, the simple fact of the matter is that floating scraps of old newspaper, even when their appearances are accompanied by unearthly moans, just aren't very frightening. Worth a look, because ultimately it is an intelligent film, but it's no classic.

I should have seen it coming....
My partner did express some disquiet about the quality of the acting in this film within the opening 10 minutes but unfortunately I did not heed her warning and we watched the blessed thing until the end.
It's quite a dishonest film in a way because certain irrelevant and unrelated parts seem to be contained within the film just so it can be marketed as a 'J-horror' It's 18 rating is entirely baffling; I can recall one daft scene depicting a girl without a face, just a hollow gap where one should be which looked rubbish but nothing else, including this, which could have justified the 18 rating.
Ok, a man finds a newspaper which predicts the death of his daughter which then happens as he has read minutes later. He is haunted by this newspaper and his failure to prevent her death. Some years later he starts receiving other newspapers which predict various other deaths and discovers other like minded souls who have received these glimpses into the future also, most if not all of them dead also.
I sometimes like to pick out a specific scene for further derision so here's one. In the course of his research the 'prophet' goes to a psychiatric hospital where a doctor tells him of a 13 year old patient they had who experienced similar episodes who, according to photos the doctor showed, aged by 60 years in 2 weeks. The doctor described how he first filled up an entire book with his predictions, then wrote on the walls when that was full. The staff removed his pen so he scratched his predictions on the walls with his nails and also used bodily fluids. Then the kid bit off his tongue and used the blood until he finally expired by bleeding to death!! I bet the staff were just kicking themselves that they hadn't thought to give him another book to write in before the tongue and loss of blood business happened. This was not spooky it was just laughably ridiculous.
This tale was only in the film so later on during an 'episode' the star of the film could materialise back in time in the boys cell and see this bald straitjacketed figure writhing across the floor spitting blood.
There was another man who made predictions who kept a video diary of himself. For some unaccountable reason he started turning dark grey/black. Of course none of any of this was ever explained either.
Premonition is very slow moving and uneventful. If you only watched the first and last 10 minutes you would capture the essence of this film perfectly and probably have seen the best bits as well. There was quite a lot of padding and filler in this, it was more like a short story with lots of lingering moody behaviour.
I was considering giving this two stars but it really bored me so no more Mr nice guy! Again, I wasn't interested enough to join the dots, it was wholly unsatisfying.