Premonition

Excellent Japanese psychological horror film.

Not a lot of blood or scariness; this film is a mind game.

Long time Japanese actor Hiroshi Mikami sees his daughter's death minutes before it happens. His wife, Noriko Sakai (star of the Japanese version of The Grudge 2), thinks he is crazy and they split.

But, she investigates further and finds a strange Japanese legend about premonition.

They find out what happens if you try to change it, and he has to choose his destiny.

Tense drama, slow at times, but a great ending.

In Norio Tsuruta's Premonition, a malevolent supernatural newspaper selects victims at random and reveals to them disastrous headlines from the near-future. When family man Hideki Satomi finds himself haunted by the evil rag, he enters a nightmare world from which the only escape appears to be death.

Like Final Destination, the US horror hit that also dealt with foresight and cheating fate, Premonition is a supernatural chiller that opens with a bang: protagonist Hideki witnesses the death of his young daughter in an auto accident immediately after learning of her impending fate via a mysterious paper. It's an excellent beginning to the film: suspenseful, exciting and very harrowing.

Unfortunately, after this promising start, the plot slowly begins to lose momentum and despite great performances from its cast and one or two outstanding scares, the whole film looks set to be a huge disappointment. To his credit though, director Tsuruta picks up the pace again in the film's dying moments for a crazy finalé which sees Hideki leaping through time and space in a desperate bid to change history.

All in all, I found this inventive slice of J-Horror to be a reasonably fun ride, despite leaving me with a ton of unanswered questions (Why does the paper like to torment people? Why does it choose Hideki? Who prints the bloody thing? If it turns up on a Sunday, do you get supplements?) and fans of the Asian horror scene should still give it a go if they get the chance.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

Following closely on the heels of 'Kansen' (aka 'Infection'), 'Yogen' in the next J-horror flick in the planned series. Arguably better than it's predecessor, it still fails to achieve greatness.

While on a family vacation, a man finds a newspaper clipping detailing the death of his daughter moments before she dies. After the incident, the man and his estranged wife try to understand how this phenomenon occurred and possibly how to use it to change the future.

The opening scene makes a promise that much of the film doesn't live up to. It's a tightly filmed piece of suspense that yields a great pay off, yet sadly the scenes that follow dwindle into monotony and tedium as the audience must wait for the characters to figure out what has already been clearly stated. I hate to say it, but I had a hard time sitting through much of the film. Not until nearer the end do things pick-up again, when the father begins a twisted time traveling scenario that borders on sheer lunacy and is so deliciously entertaining.

Technically the film is competent. Camera work, color, and the like are good. The actors are also quiet capable even if the writing is dull. All in all no better or worse than most Japanese horror flicks.

A quality opening and a bizarrely satisfying conclusion bookend an otherwise ordinary tale of loss and the supernatural.

6/10

Skillfully edited and highly tensioned, Yogen is one every so often discussed psycho-horror. It's been produced from the idea of the same titled Japanese comic book of 1950s' and follows the storyline of a solid Japanese novel from the same decade. The comic book creates a heroic theme out of a psychic family man who saves his family from a traffic accident, while the novel focuses on precognitive newspaper delusions seen by ordinary people.

In the opening scene, giving a little clue of the main idea, we're being introduced to a middle-aged female victim of a paranormal incident taken from a newspaper article. She is being tested over her newly acquired supernatural skills at an university research laboratory. The second scene, where main characters are introduced, has the heart-wrenching traffic accident that gives cause for a chain of more alike accidents. The common trait of each accident is that they both have precognitive warnings to their survivors. The survivors of this first accident were parents to a 5-year-old singleton, who got killed in the accident. To their surprise their daughter has been the only vein that holds them together. Atfer the death of their daughter they get parted. They both keep receiving precognitive warnings for next alike accidents of their colleagues, disciples, friends and relatives.

Over the last few years we've seen likes of this idea in Hollywood. With Sandra Bullock, also with Nicolas Cage there were either action or drama based films displayed. Among all, Yogen has the most influential message: Everyone has tremendous abilities hidden inside that might become surfaced once in a while for everyone. But we're not born to behave like angels or daemons. To have psychic skills is no means of becoming stronger or wiser. Uncontrolled power is not power at all, and we're not born to have such powers.

With extreme usage of melodrama and surrealist pen-portraits, Yogen is a one-way ticket for travelling into a metaphysical world of limitless secrets, symbols, dreams and intuition where time has lost its permanence.

An effective combination of 'change the future'-style sci-fi thriller and traditional Japanese horror. PREMONITION tells the story of an ordinary man caught up in some extraordinary events…and the dark avenues to which he is eventually led as a result of this.

Things kick off with a shocking set-piece in which a young girl is killed in one of those accidents that are filmed so well in Asian cinema. Years later and the father blames himself for not saving her, as he was warned by a newspaper article in the moments before her death. Soon he becomes convinced that he can go back in time to save her, and becomes involved with various psychics who claim to be able to see the future.

What follows is both familiar and unpredictable at the same time. Director Norio Tsuruta, hot off making RING 0, shoots this as a horror rather than science fiction film, so incorporates various scare sequences that end up being very effective. There's little to no gore here, just a creeping psychological approach that pays dividends as the story progresses. I defy anyone not to jump in their seat at the 'faceless ghost' scene.

The pacing is rather slow – when isn't it in a J-horror? – but it gradually picks up as the film builds momentum, culminating in a blistering climax involving our protagonist hopping through realities at a dizzying pace. It reminded me of the hilarious extended fight climax of Wes Craven's SHOCKER, although of course it's treated seriously here. Hiroshi Mikami is excellent as the haunted protagonist – think of the calibre of Hiroyuki Sanada in Ring and you'll be close – and the film as a whole never pulls its punches.