The Premonition

The sedate, middle class couple who adopted delightful poppet Janie (Danielle Briseboise) shockingly have their suburban quietude thrown into roiling existential turmoil after, Janie's increasingly anxious mother, Sheri (Sharon Farrell) strongly suspects her child is in mortal danger. Distressed by the discovery of pretty, yet emotionally disturbed Andrea (Ellen Barber)in Janie's bedroom, she later believes, Andrea is using witchcraft to wish them additional spiritual harm! Sheri's disturbing 'visions' suggest a tangible telekinetic ability, but her pragmatic scientist husband, Edward (Miles Bennet) is reluctant to accept that the danger encroaching upon them has a preternatural origin! Clearly disturbed, there's no doubting the entirely corporeal threat of, Jude (Richard Lynch) a charismatic carny whose benign clowning exterior belies a volatile nature capable of manifesting fearsome acts of bestial violence!

Maverick filmmaker, Robert Allen Schnitzler's off-beat, genuinely unsettling Para-psychological horror oddity is steeped in preternatural weirdness and rewardingly eschews graphic gore for intense emotional discords which cut deeper than, Michael Myers crimson-slathered knife! While teasingly oblique, Schnitzer's haunting, compellingly strange psychodrama 'The Premonition' is a beautifully structured, handsomely photographed, strikingly original independent feature. The exceptionally fine cast is complemented with Henry Mollicone & Pril Smiley's especially beguiling score. Schnitzler's iconoclastic, extra sensory perception warping cult classic is both a fascinating 70s cinematic time capsule and wholly timeless nightmare. The eerie, darkly evocative themes of macabre metaphysical realms are certainly no less captivating when viewed today! I predict a great number of new fans shall willingly succumb to the hypnotic allure of this hallucinatory mystery.

A neurotic Andrea Fletcher(Ellen Barber)returns from a mental institution.The woman is looking for her daughter Janie.With the help of a circus employee Jude(Richard Lynch)Andrea wants to kidnap the girl from her adoptive parents.But the plan goes wrong and the supernatural visions begin...I can't believe that Robert Allen Schnitzer's "The Premonition" is rated so low.The script is imaginative as it delves into the bond of motherhood,telepathy and precognition.The acting is strong,the direction by Schnitzer is competent and there is some powerful suspense.The shock moments are very effective for example the scene where Andrea in a red evening gown slips into Janie's bedroom is very eerie and sad.A must-see for fans of "The Brood" and "Don't Look Now".8 out of 10.

The script killed this movie, it must have been half as long of most movies of its time. It made the film really drag on when scene after scene the characters barely say a word. I don't know why its called a horror either as The Premonition is definitely not one.

It's really about a couple of women losing their minds over a kidnapping. What I couldn't understand as the motivation for the man who was behind it. Richard Lynch largely carries the movie as a man possessed into doing the kidnapping. At the end of the movie the only character you can feel any sympathy for is the child at the center of the drama and yet not any horror involved.

Andrea Fletcher (Ellen Barber) is recently out of a mental hospital and still unhinged. Declared an unfit mother prior to her hospital stay, she's desperate to get back her young daughter. Jude (Richard Lynch) is an acquaintance she met while institutionalized. Now working as a carnival clown, he keeps an eye out for Andrea's daughter. He spots the girl one day with her adoptive mother, Sheri (Sharon Farrell). After sharing the news with Andrea, the two plan to kidnap little Janie from her foster parents. The stress of the events sets off a series of psychic visions in Sheri. With the help of her husband's colleague, a professor in parapsychology, she attempts to use her abilities to get Janie back.

This Mississippi-lensed slice of regional horror is one of the most underrated films I've ever come across. Just take a look at that absurd IMDb rating. In no way, shape or form does this haunting little chiller deserve to be rated that low. Yes, it does have it's problems. The early scenes between Sheri's husband and Dr. Kingsly feel shoehorned in, and the development of ESP in Sheri later on seems to be a bit too coincidental. Her husband has just met an expert on the subject a day or two before this all happens. The metaphysical elements also never come together as cohesively as director Robert Allen Schnitzer likely hoped. They certainly add to the intrigue of the picture, however, not to mention the mood. What doesn't add to the mood are some scene transitions that are really jarring.

With all of that said, this is a beautiful film. The hypnotic atmosphere is vividly rendered, striking me as a mixture between Val Lewton, "Carnival of Souls" and "Let's Scare Jessica to Death". The haunting tone and emphasis on character are also things that "The Premonition" has in common with the aforementioned films. The people on display here are emotionally wounded, be it Andrea's unbearable need for her daughter or Sheri's desire to have a child of her own, which she's incapable of. Even Jude has his issues. He clearly wishes to settle down with Andrea, but she's only intent on using him. Her rant about him never being a father to Janie or anyone else gets under his skin to the point that he keeps the kid when he has no real reason to later on. Sharon Farrell and Richard Lynch are both very good in their roles, though it's Ellen Barber who really shines. At first appearance, her Andrea looks to be a normal young woman, but she flies off the deep end at the drop of a hat. There's an intense hatred behind her eyes, one to which even her partner in crime isn't immune.

Another thing in the film's favor is that it's never predictable. There was one big surprise about midway through, and Schnitzer takes a unique approach to his ending. I think it paid off, as the climactic sequence is a thing of beauty in regard to how it relates to our characters. That's the gist of it, too. This is a strictly low key affair, very character-driven. Is it a masterpiece? No, but it is a damn fine sleeper that deserves much more respect than it's been given in the 34 years since it's release.

"The Premonition" follows a mother who begins experiencing bizarre visions after her daughter's biological mother (who is clinically insane) tracks them down, along with the help of her unstable circus clown boyfriend.

Released in 1976, this supernatural thriller is something of the progenitor of the modern supernatural-themed horror/thriller films of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Though branded as a horror film, my impression of this film is that it's perhaps more of a thriller with added melodrama. Shot in the southern U.S., the film has a dreary and almost dreamlike sensibility, and does boast some rather frightening nightmare sequences in which the mother (played by Sharon Farrell) has disturbing premonitory visions.

The main fault of "The Premonition" is the way in which the supernatural element is shoehorned into the plot; we never really get a solid explanation as to why these visions manifest, and Farrell's character's husband is conveniently a professor whose colleague studies the supernatural. This quasi-scientific side of the film is a bit dull (and perhaps inspired by "The Exorcist"), whereas the plot involving the child's insane biological mother and boyfriend (the latter played nefariously by Richard Lynch)--and their pursuit of the girl--is much more intriguing.

The film concludes with a rather grand sequence that seems a bit absurd, but Farrell and the other performers all commit to the material, rendering it passable. All in all, "The Premonition" is a fairly well-made supernatural thriller, though one that is not entirely the sum of its parts. The film does steep itself in too much melodrama for its own good at times, but in the end, there is enough dreamlike atmosphere and intrigue to keep the audience committed until the end. 6/10.