A thriller slammed by critics wakes up to Netflix success

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Image: Netflix

Some people purposely seek out poorly rated movies in order to laugh at how bad they are. Well, that seems to be the case with Premonition, which was hit with a rating of 8% on Rotten Tomatoes back in 2007 but has found its way onto Netflix’s top 10 movies, per FlixPatrol.

The mystery/thriller follows Linda Hanson, who finds out her husband was killed in a car accident the previous day, then awakens the next morning to find him alive and well at home; then awakens the day after to find he’s dead. If that sounds confusing to you, then you’re not alone. The timeline jumps throughout the film get disorientating and make it incredibly difficult to follow, like some sort of bad take on Christopher Nolan’s Memento.

Released in 2007, Premonition somehow made $84 million at the box office. The movie stars Sandra Bullock, who does an excellent job expressing the confusion viewers feel while watching her. In an interview just prior to the film’s release, Bullock said the message of the film is “the American dream becomes the American nightmare.” Perhaps they took that message a little too literally when creating a film that would be every critic’s worst nightmare.

This isn’t Bullock’s only poorly rated film to do well on Netflix. Her most recent release, The Unforgivable, received a rating of 39% on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite being dogged by disgruntled critics, it recently managed to top Netflix charts in 83 countries.

Premonition had the ability to destroy Bullock’s career, but she proved critics wrong when she went on to star in The Blind Side, which won her the Oscar for Best Actress in 2009. Viewers who want to see just how bad Premonition really is can stream it for themselves on Netflix.