Shakespeaere used many soothsayers in his plays. The soohsayers furthered the plot or brought dire warnings. If soothsayers were not available, the weird sisters who haunt Macbeth or a ghost will do. Modern film makers do not use this technique often. Directos and producers tend to shy away from this technique today, although this is not always the case. One of the most prominent examples of a soothsayers in movies is the movie First Snow.

Mark Fergus’s movie opens with advice given by a psychic to a stranded traveller in a snow storm a prediction. Get more information here. The psychic tells him that he will soon experience a windfall. The psychic makes two predictions, in fact, that after the first snow there will be no tomorrow.

Although the windfall soon occurs, his conscience soon catches up to him over an older matter. He worries if his former friend Vince will come back to haunt him. His girlfriend and his business partner watch him descend into madness.

Using psychics or soothsayers in amovie often seems like a cheesy gimmick, but it works well for certain kinds of stories. In First Snow, it does not even matter if the predictions turn out to be true. What matters more is the psychological reacion of the charaters to the predictions.