Premonition

[murlough23]

I know this is a bit out of date since the movie released in March and all, but I just saw it yesterday and wanted to discuss some things that were either inconsistent or left open for interpretation. This affects how valid I think some of the scathing reviews of this movie were.

Obviously, this thread will contain spoilers for those who haven't seen the movie and still actually care to see it at this point. I'm assuming that's nobody.

So what was the deal with the daughter's face? She crashed through the glass door on Tuesday, she was seen all scratched up at the funeral on Saturday, but on Thursday (which was the first of the days Sandra Bullock's character experienced), she was fine. I have a hard time believing they'd let such a major inconsistency slip through, so were they trying to imply that she could, in fact, change the outcome of things? (If only for the worse, in this case.)

Also, the bird's blood on the glass door was placed as if that was going to be an important piece of the puzzle later, but then it kind of got dropped. That was weird. I'll have to check the deleted scenes and see if they tried to do anything with it and then just decided it wasn't crucial to the plot.

I found most everything else to be fairly consistent, and I was able to keep a pretty good mental log of what happened on what day during the movie - they did a good job of establishing which day was which, without playing them in a predictable order (when I expected it to be Wednesday, they actually inserted Sunday, which was a day I didn't expect to see at all). The washed-out flashbacks were also helpful (though that's a bit of a common film technique when showing something non-linear) - in general, they did a good job of giving visual and verbal clues to what happened when, without explaining it all in clunky dialogue as if we were total dummies, which I appreciated.

I actually liked the ending of the movie, which I'm sure puts me in the minority. I kind of figured it would be a cheat, a typical Hollywood ending, if she could save her husband - it would then radically alter everything we saw in the days after his death, and invalidate half of the time we spent watching the movie (not to mention creating a casuality paradox of massive proportions). Things like that were why I didn't like The Lake House as much. I kind of figured that the movie would end up being about a self-fulfilling prophecy - she tries to prevent something, and in doing so, actually ends up causing it to happen. Maybe the way that it was caused was a little contrived - I mean, didn't she recognize that section of the highway? Do you think she could have made sure they were past that point before asking him to pull over? But I liked the silver lining in the very last scene, where she was pregnant - it showed that she could change something. She knew she was probably going to lose him, and she chose not to waste her last night with him. The ability to change that helps the inconsistencies I pointed out earlier to make a little more sense - but still, it's not all as satisfyingly airtight as I would have liked.

Thoughts from anyone else who actually bothered to see this movie?

[RedcoatJones]

I saw this last night, and I'm guessing the inconsistancies and dropped threads bothered me more than you. Like you, the whole face cut, no cut thing really didn't make much sense.  Also, in Linda's experiences, the days actually occurred as they appeared to her (Thursday, Tuesday, Saturday, etc.), even if everyone else was in "normal" time. The whole "religious" aspect dropped in towards the end wasn't very satisfying ... worse ... in now way did they imply that Linda found any sort of faith, just a realization that she *did* love her husband.

I also would have liked some wrapping up of dropped threads:

What was the result of being committed? They just let her out once she quit acting funny?
On every day except Wednesday, things she did still affected what happened "later" in linear time ... except on Wednesday. She was at the crash, but then had to be told Thursday. Wouldn't she have stayed at the scene as a witness ... or did her being there now create a "new" set of Thursday - Saturday ....

*sigh* ... this movie bugged me for some reason, and I usually really like nonlinear mind-teasers.

[murlough23]

I saw this last night, and I'm guessing the inconsistancies and dropped threads bothered me more than you. Like you, the whole face cut, no cut thing really didn't make much sense.

It warranted some explanation. it could have been an interesting plot angle if we had seen this becoming a catalyst for her realization that she could actually change things.

An explanation of why the hell she was experiencing days out of order would have been nice, too.

The whole "religious" aspect dropped in towards the end wasn't very satisfying ... worse ... in now way did they imply that Linda found any sort of faith, just a realization that she *did* love her husband.

Yeah, that whole angle was pretty lame. I think the DVD extras helped to explain why they dropped that in there, as they explored "real" phenomena involving people who had experienced so-called premonitions, and recorded of this in history where it definitely was considered to have religious implications. The movie had a reason for putting it there; they just forgot to tell us why in the actual script, and as most movies that bothered to bring up faith do, they sold out and made it a vague faith in cheap true love or some crap like that.

Fortunately, that stuff wasn't the crux of the movie as far as I could see. Most supernatural-type thrillers have mumbo-jumbo explanations, so, whatever.

What was the result of being committed? They just let her out once she quit acting funny?

I was wondering how she managed to get through all of the being drugged and knocked around and stress without losing her baby. (Can you lose a baby due to such things when you've just conceived it?)

On every day except Wednesday, things she did still affected what happened "later" in linear time ... except on Wednesday. She was at the crash, but then had to be told Thursday. Wouldn't she have stayed at the scene as a witness ... or did her being there now create a "new" set of Thursday - Saturday ....

The optimist would say it's an open-ended question, but it might have just been a bit lazy. At the very least, we should have seen her getting the hell out of there after the crash. Which would make sense - she wouldn't want anyone knowing she was there, because it would make her a suspect. Why the cops couldn't contact her between then and Thursday morning, and why there weren't messages on her answering machine from their attempts to contact her, I can't say. (There was a very funny outtake in the DVD extras where, apparently, one of the prop guys threw out the dummy head that was supposed to be Jim's and it rolled down the road and Sandra Bullock just lost it completely. A bit morbid, but very funny to watch her chase after it and pretend to be distraught over her dead husband while holding his head in her arms and so forth.)

I usually find that I'm a lot more annoyed by such inconsistencies or a lack of decent explanation in a film, but I think this time around I was enchanted enough by the way that the story was told and the way that I wrapped it up that these things seemed minor - kind of like an annoying continuity error in an otherwise creepy and thrilling episode of Lost. It bugs and I'll complain about it, but I still liked the overall product, for the most part.

I can see why most people hated the movie, though.

NP: "I'm Alright", Luna Halo