The Premonition (12)

***WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILER***

This was a genuinely creepy and disturbing film. Hideki, his wife Ayaka and their young daughter Nana are driving home from a weekend visiting relatives. Hideki, working in the the backseat, asks Ayaka to drive back to a phone box so he can send some work from his laptop to the office. While he is on the phone, Nana complains that her dress is caught in the buckle of the seatbelt and Ayaka gets out to help her but can't get the belt off. In the meantime, Hideki sees an old scrap of newspaper with what looks like picture of his daughter on it. It tells him that a young girl named Nana was killed when a lorry crashed head-on into her parents' car, parked on the side of the road. He runs out of the phone box and towards his family when the premonition comes true.

Jump 3 years ahead. The couple are divorced and each in their own way struggles to understand the "newspaper of death" and what happened. It seems, however, time is running out as Hideki is starting to get more and more premonitions and nobody who sees the newspaper lives a long life. Can they save him from a hideous fate?

This was genuinely creepy, especially when you begin to realise the appalling choice that will eventually confront Hideki. It was horrible enough that I was hiding under a blanket at the thought of having to make that choice. Just as the film descends into chaos and confusion, it redeems itself with a coherent ending - something which does not always occur in Asian horror films. The atmosphere, per usual, drives the plot along, with the sets designed to emanate a feeling of doom. The cell in the psych ward especially is good and the abandoned house.

Highly recommended.