Yogen begins with a tight sequence full of foreboding. A married couple with their young daughter are driving home from vacation when the father, Professor Hideki Satomi, needs to send an email. To get an internet connection they stop at a phone booth, and whilst waiting for his email to connect Hideki receives a shocking premonition. He discovers a newspaper depicting his daughter Nana's death: she dies in a car explosion, alone, after an impact by a lorry. He spots the date - it's today's - he sees the time - it's now - it happens right behind him, his wife Ayaka having tried unsuccessfully to release Nana from the back seat. This opening is suspenseful and subsequently sets a high expectation for the rest of the film.

We now travel three years into the future where Hideki and Ayaka are divorced, their marriage not having survived the horrific experience and aftermath of Nana's death. Their continuing relationship is explored with surprising depth: no character is wholly blamed for past events and both leads are written believably and with sympathy. Hideki soon becomes haunted with other premonitions, and with his ex-wife's help finds some answers about his own fate and others. This leads to the most disappointing part of the film, the meandering middle section, where audiences fidget and become eager for a pay-off.

It's worth the wait. With a journey into hell, one shocking sequence in particular and some genuine 'jump' moments, Yogen also manages to incorporate familiar concepts from films such as Groundhog Day and The Butterfly Effect. Despite this, the premise still feels fresh and the last twenty minutes deserve full attention.

I wouldn't classify Yogen solely as a horror, as the conventions of mystery, thriller and even some romance are also apparent. This film relies more on character development and a well thought-out (albeit sometimes slow) script than cheap shocks or blood and gore. With strong acting (most notably the stressed-out and suitably skinny performance from Hiroshi Mikami as Hideki), nicely crafted sequences and a pervading score, this film is predictable and unpredictable in equal measures. Admittedly uneven, if a viewer has enjoyed films of a similar premise, they can be confident Yogen ultimately delivers and entertains.

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.