Premonition (2004)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

As this Japanese chiller opens a family are travelling home after a holiday; they stop so the father, Hideki Satomi can use a public phone box. While inside he sees a scrap of newspaper and reads a report of a fatal car crash... nothing obviously strange about that but the report tells how his daughter, Nana, was killed a minute or two in the future! Inside the car his wife Ayaka is struggling with Nana's seatbelt; moments after she gets out to ask Hideki for help a lorry hits the car and then explodes killing Nana.Three years pass and Hideki and Ayaka are divorced. She is interviewing a medium about the 'Newspaper of Terror' while he continues to have premonitions of death. One day he sees a report about a student of his being killed by a serial killer; he rushes to try to save her but is unsuccessful. Shortly after he is reunited with his wife and they investigate other people who received cuttings from the 'Newspaper of Terror'... they do not bode well; if he does nothing he is likely to go mad, if he acts to save somebody he will suffer a different unpleasant fate.This film opens in a fairly shocking way with the death of a young child; after that it moves at a more sedate pace for much of the time. This is effective as it builds up an impressive atmosphere as we ponder whether he can act on the newspaper reports of imminent death and if he can whether there will be consequences. There are a few shocking moments including a brief view of a person with a hole where their face should have been... given that the film's UK rating is listed as '12', both here and on the BBFC site, I can only assume the '18' certificate DVD incudes stronger material in trailers for other films! Things do get a little strange towards the end put these events lead up to a more than satisfactory conclusion. Director Norio Tsuruta goes for an effective, minimalist approach; there is far less background music than one would expect in a Hollywood movie and he doesn't attempt to show the disasters that are foretold. Hiroshi Mikami and Noriko Sakai impress as Hideki and Ayaka making them believable despite the situation. Overall a fine film for fans of Japanese horror/chiller films.

This was an interesting watch. It was originally released as part of a double feature alongside Masayuki Ochiai's Infection, and is based loosely on Jirô Tsunoda's manga The Newspaper of Terror.I found that it had a super strong beginning — it pulled me right in — and a super strong ending, but the middle was a bit lacking and I felt like it meandered for a while.The very first scene — starting off so innocent and happy and quickly descending into absolute terror and heartbreak — was extremely engaging. The confusion of Hideki (played by Hiroshi Mikami) when he finds the newspaper article, Nana (played by Hana Inoue) screaming for help — it was all so intense. But after that, when we got into more of the searching and the trying to find an answer, it got a bit diluted and I thought kind of soap opera-esque at times, with some pretty cheesy moments (like Ayaka, played by Noriko Sakai, saying "you can't run away forever!" as Hideki, you guessed it, runs away, or their dramatic kiss as the scene fades out). There were a few good moments mixed in, for sure — like Hideki having the dream about hearing Nana's voice outside his door and opening it to find her charred body — but I think it largely lost steam for a while.I was torn about the characterization of the newspaper itself. There were times when it was a bit corny — moaning, dissolving into smoke — but other times I thought it was truly cool how the newspaper was made to be this sentient being, intently following, purposeful. It made it less of just a random addition to the movie and almost a character in itself, which was cool.The relationship between Hideki and Ayaka is heartbreaking — they obviously love each other deeply but were torn apart by tragedy. They have all of this bitterness and regret, but ultimately decide to overcome those things to work towards solving the mystery.Really, the whole concept of having to decide which aspect of the premonitions you will succumb to — if you aren't consumed by madness or illness you will be by guilt — is fascinating and terrifying. There's no "good" choice, you just have to decide what will ultimately be your end.After a while of some "meh" scenes, Hideki starts to go through this wild series of flashbacks. The whole process is disorienting — in a good way, really, and I think it's important, but it is confusing at times to know which way is up. But he is forced back to the original experience — the accident that kills Nana — and while he tries to fix things, tries to find this magical combination where he can save both himself and his family, you are forced to walk alongside him in his frustration and heartbreak. His flashback to before the trip started, when he hugs Nana, is heart-wrenching… his emotion is just so real and palpable. But he realizes that the only way out is to sacrifice himself… and it's a pretty wild ending, finishing off with not only him finally "resting" in a sense in his final decision, but leaving some mystery with the newspaper floating over Nana.Again, I thought it lost some of its momentum in the middle — I wish it could have kept up the intensity — but it was ultimately a very clever, intelligent film.

Only seen this once before and I really enjoyed back then, It's been a really long time since I seen it and I gave it another re-watch. I love the plot , it started of really well, I really enjoyed the effect of Car scene and little one acted really well. It did have some part of the movie, that were a little slow in the middle but dose not last toolong as it's picks up again.I loved the crazy scenes , when end up being from one place to another, I did jump in one scene. I loved the ending, yeah it might seem a bit predicable but it worked really well with the rest of the movie. It's odd that some sites say Premonition (2007) Is a remake of this, Which is NOT! , both movies are Very different and don't even have the same plot.I am giving this a 7 out of 10

Premonition is one of those Japanese horror movies that focuses more on being creepy than terrifying. And outside of one guffaw-inducing moment, it mainly succeeds.The story starts with a Japanese family driving home. Mom Akaya (Noriko Sakai) is sweetly singing with little daughter Nana (Hana Inoue) while workaholic dad Hideki (Hiroshi Mikami) is typing away on his computer, finishing up some work for the office. Hideki's laptop loses its internet connection, so they stop at a phone booth. Apparently, pay phones in Japan have internet uplinks. Anyway, while Hideki emails his report back to the office, Akaya and Nana remain in the car parked on the roadside. While in the phone booth, Hideki notices a ragged scrap of newspaper in which he finds a story about his daughter being killed in a roadside accident. He freaks out as Akaya leaves the car and comes to his side…at which point a truck plows into the car and kills Nana.Flash forward a few years and Hideki and Akaya are divorced. He's a burned out high school teacher living in a crappy apartment. She's a university researcher studying psychic phenomenon, particularly a professor who can make images appear in instant photographs. Akaya's studies bring her to the work of Rei Kigata (Kei Yamamoto), who wrote about something called "The Newspaper of Terror". He describes people who claimed to receive news reports about tragedies before they occur. Meanwhile, Hideki starts to see more ragged newspapers and other signs of future disasters. When he learns one of his students is destined to die and he fails to save her, Hideki and Akaya are reunited in an effort to understand what's happened to them and why their daughter had to die.Though it features very little violence or gore, Premonition does contain a decent amount of scares. Like similar Japanese films, it concentrates on creating a mood of fear and uncertainty, eschewing the adrenaline-pumping plot dynamics of American horror flicks. This is the sort of film where the audience repeatedly sees the characters react to something and then the camera moves and the audience sees what they're reacting to. That storytelling distance produces more of an intellectual anxiety, instead of a visceral reaction.After building up the mystery of "The Newspaper of Terror", the story doesn't really pay it off. No questions are answered by the ending the movie offers up, which deal with more of an existential horror that doesn't quite seem like it fits the first three-quarters of the film. It's effective on its own, but I'm not sure it dramatically or thematically flows from what comes before it. It's like taking the conclusion of a good episode of The Twilight Zone and stapling it onto a different but vaguely similar episode of The Outer Limits.Outside of a single scene that is unintentionally hilarious, the acting and direction of Premonition are very nice. That one scene, though, is laugh-out-loud funny. It involves Japanese funeral rites, so the humor may be the byproduct of cultural differences, but I almost couldn't stop laughing when it happened.As long as you're prepared to accept an ending that fails to resolve any of the issues raised by its story, Premonition is worth seeing…if only for the most terrifying scrap of newsprint in cinematic history.