(2007, 96 min) Sandra Bullock lures the audiences with her starring role in this mind-twisting thriller. With the tone of countless "Twilight Zone" episodes, this film tries and sometimes entertains with healthy doses of supernatural dream logic peppered with confusing time-shifting. Married to successful businessman and father, Jim (Julian McMahon, better known as Victor Von Doom from the Fantastic Four franchise), Linda (Bullock) goes about her daily routine until a sheriff’s knock on her door signals the beginning of a descent into a strangely sterile mind warp as he proclaims her husband’s death the day before. As she gathers her willpower to carry on and survive, along with her two small daughters, she finally sleeps that night. In the morning she wakes to discover her husband very much alive. The audience soon becomes witnesses to the cinematic fact that Linda is living day to day, yet the days are non-sequential. She sleeps, her husband is alive, she sleeps, he is dead again. This creaky plot device allows her to peer into the future, at times trying to prevent her husband’s demise, and at times to be neutrally resigned to her fate.
Various other “facts” appear as the film moves forward, yet in the long run they neither support nor detract from the underlying message of the script. It is extremely difficult to pull off a nonlinear narration without turning off the majority of your audience. For instance, Atom Egoyan has perfected this form in films like The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica, time lines shifting from present to past to present in order to build a rich composite of motive and character. This film employs this tact for a completely different purpose, supposedly to build suspense and ambiguity. So, at times it sometimes works and at other moments it’s simply confusing.
Bullock does manage to pull off a decent performance, in spite of mounting illogic and plot holes. When she discovers that indeed she can shift events ever so slightly in order to make her present/future more palatable, the narrative’s plausibility is enhanced. Suffice to say, there is a positive outcome achieved by the end that is not easily arrived at.
© TLA Entertainment Group
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