The opener for Takashige Ichise’s J-Horror series is Asian horror by numbers, but with a redeeming finale…
Ever since he saw a newspaper foretelling his daughters’ death, just moments before it happened, Hideki Satomi (Hiroshi Mikami, The Peacock King, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence) has been plagued by nightmares of those events. Three years on he’s divorced from his wife, Ayaka (Noriko Sakai Ju-on: The Grudge 2, Moonlight Jellyfish), and continuing his existence in a lonely apartment terrified of the daily paper.
Desperately wanting to believe her husband, and his instance that the newspaper existed, she has spent her time researching tales of the ‘Terror Newspaper’ that foresees the future. As she begins to uncover the truth, it seems Hideki is himself cursed with the ability, foretelling everything from serial murders to train crashes. He faces a choice of either being driven mad by powerlessness to change events, or a far worse fate should he try to? Can Hideki and his wife get to the bottom of the curse before it consumes him?
Premonition is the first of a series of films from producer Takashige ‘Taka’ Ichise under the banner ‘J-Horror Theatre’. Ichise’s track record has been pretty high, having produded the Ring trilogy, Dark Water and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge movies. (In a previous life he also worked as a producer for special effects sequences, including those in the recently reviewed Peacock King.)
The series is allegedly his reply to distributors who pestered him, asking him when his next horror was to be released. (With the upcoming release of Ju-On: The Grudge 2 one can only wonder at their impatience.) Of course, that old ‘From the makers of…’ tag counts for little in terms of quality, and sadly this first film is a case in point.
The story itself, adapted from the highly successful Manga Kyôfu shinbun by Jirô Tsunoda, seems to have been reduced to Asian horror by numbers. Like someone has distilled the most familiar elements from author Koji Suzuki’s books, Hideo Nataka’s adaptations, and added elements from Takashi Miike’s Audition and Shimizu’s Ju-On. The result feels more like a checklist than a movie. Professor investigating supernatural event, tick. Family unit in danger, tick. Video footage shown in the room it takes place, tick. Confusing surreal ending, tick. And so on… Worse still, there’s little effort made to try and tie these elements together.
Which, is a trashy way, would not necessarily have been a problem, had the project been given to another director rather Norio Tsuruta, responsible for the extremely lacklustre and disappointing Ring 0. Tsuruta seems unable to convincingly direct horror, bringing all the menace of a BBC sit-com director. Performances under him are hammy, the potential atmosphere so lacking that frights are made pretty much ineffective.
That said, the finale – for all it’s surreal, Audition style confusion – really does go in a very unexpected direction, impressively redeeming the film beyond all its very familiar elements. Whether that’s enough to make you want to sit through the 80 minutes beforehand – well, you might want to give that a miss!
DVD details
Distributor: Tartan Asia Extreme (UK)
The UK DVD will have a smattering of extras, including a Making Of featurette, the Japanese press conference and documentary on the visual effects.
