Netflix And Chill: Premonition (2007)

One of a couple of movies in the very small subgenre we can label “Sandra Bullock is confused by time not acting in a linear fashion while she tries to save the man she loves”, Premonition is a slick mystery thriller that makes good use of the supernatural idea at the heart of it. It’s just a shame that nobody feels right in the main roles, and the writing and direction remain distinctly average throughout.

Bullock stars as Linda Hanson, mother of two young girls and wife of Jim (Julian McMahon). This is how her character is defined, and that is all viewers need. A police officer comes to the door one day, delivering the awful news that Jim has been killed in a car crash. As distraught as she is, things become more confusing when Linda wakes up “the next morning” and finds Jim alive again. She eventually gets pulled back to the time in which Jim remains dead. And is then back to before the crash. And so it goes on, with Linda trying to figure out how to fix things, while those around her assume that grief has made her lose her mind.

Written by Bill Kelly and directed by Mennan Yapo, Premonition perfectly illustrates why these two people have a very limited filmography, and nothing that stands out as being even close to this kind of thing. There’s a solid central premise to be worked with here, but neither writer nor director leans hard enough into any direction with it, although things improve slightly in the third act. None of the plotting keeps viewers off-kilter, meaning we all know more than the main character almost every step of the way. And there’s an annoying refusal to make things any more dramatic, or tense, or horrific, than your average evening soap opera.

Bullock is okay in the lead, but I am only saying that because I like Bullock. She feels miscast, just never as comfortable as the stressed-out and mentally fraying woman she has to portray. McMahon is also miscast, mainly because he is SO good at playing shitty men that it can be hard to root for him as a normal guy. Peter Stormare and Nia Long are both sorely underused, the child actors are decent enough, and Kate Nelligan does good work as Linda’s concerned mother. There’s also a small role for Amber Valletta, who is perhaps the biggest victim of the poor writing and execution.

Not exciting, not tense, not populated by people you can really care for, I predict most people will rate Premonition even lower than I do.

3/10

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Shudder Saturday: Monster Party (2018)

There's a fun idea at the centre of Monster Party, but it's also just a bit too silly. Murderers who are trying not to keep murdering get themselves some support network, in the same way as alcoholics use the AA. That should allow them to stay "dry" and keep everyone safer. A bunch of these murderers are gathered together in one house, while Casper (Sam Strike), Iris (Virginia Gardner), and Dodge (Brandon Micheal Hall) are trying to rob it. The robbers are obviously unaware of the deadliness of the party guests and home owners, but they'll soon discover it.

Written and directed by Chris von Hoffmann, his second full movie after numerous shorts and the feature Drifter (which I have not seen), Murder Party is, as mentioned at the start of the previous paragraph, a fun idea that ends up being a bit too silly. And I'm not sure if the material would have been better-served by making it a more subtle piece of work or by leaning harder into the fun of the premise.

It's a film that feels hard to say too much about, because none of the extra elements around the main thrust of the plot are worth the time spent on them. A lead character who needs the money to help his in-debt father to pay off someone he seems to regularly owe? Don't care. Characters acting upset that they are breaking their non-murdering time? It doesn't work. An extra house resident who turns up and looks like they've just escaped from The Funhouse? It's one additional scene that adds nothing. In fact, it ends up changing things for the worse.

The cast do okay, but it's a shame that Von Hoffmann places us alongside the three leads and younger members of the household when he has also managed to procure the talents of Robin Tunney, Julian McMahon, and Lance Reddick. The latter two are particularly fun, but Tunney is excellent as a woman tired and fed up of those not strong enough to avoid bloodshed. Strike, Gardner, and Hall aren't bad, they're just not good enough to keep rooting for. And very few of the other young cast members even make an impression, aside from Erin Moriarty (a member of the deadly family who may be different from the others). Kian Lawley stands out for all the wrong reason, he's neither threatening enough, nor is he enough fun in his role, and the same can be said for both Chester Rushing and Jamie Ward, both of whom you'd be forgiven for even forgetting they were actually in the film.

There are one or two good moments dotted throughout this, but they actually come along at the very beginning and end of the film. And those are the scenes bookending the "monster party" itself, which is surely not how Von Hoffmann intended things to seem. Perhaps he'll do better with his next feature. Maybe it will help him to work from a good idea developed by another writer. Or he'll just work harder to make the leads more worthy of your time and attention.

5/10