Knowing
Knowing (2009)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Chandler Canterbury, Rose Byrne, and Lara Robinson.
Directing: Alex Proyas
At A Glance: A teacher opens a time capsule that has been dug up at his son’s elementary school; in it are some chilling predictions — some that have already occurred and others that are about to — that lead him to believe his family plays a role in the events that are about to unfold.
What The Goose? This had a very promising beginning. As the synopsis states, a time capsule is unearthed and opened. Within it are pictures that the children of the elementary school where it was buried had drawn, depicting what they thought the world would be like 50 years in the future (the pictures were drawn in 1959). But, one of those pages doesn’t have a picture, but instead is full of numbers. Line after line of seemingly random numbers.
The movies progresses fairly quickly with Nic Cage finding that the numbers correspond to dates when tragedies happened, as well as the number of people that died in said tragedy. It takes a few more minutes of the movie to show that the other numbers between these dates were the location (longitude and latitude) of said tragedy. But, there are only three dates left on the sheet.
Now, I started to enjoy this movie, despite the fact that aliens were obviously involved. Depending on who you talk to, including my wife, you may find that these aliens were actually angels. But the end of the movie shows to me that they’re aliens. Why? Well, see, I have a problem with angels using spaceships. Yeah, I know. Close minded am I.
And that’s really my biggest problem with it. The aliens. Couldn’t you come up with something else, Hollywood? Aliens? Really? Also, the movie just seemed really, really, really drawn out. The tension level was kept high and long for most of the movie, leaving me feeling tired within the first hour. I was so ready for it to be over.
So, in a nutshell, this is just another Big Apocalypse movie where aliens come down to save mankind by taking away those who “hear the call.” They take these kids (I presume, given that the two main kids of the show were the only ones we actually saw) to another planet, where they’re set down in a really badly rendered CGI wheat field, near a glowing white tree (Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil anyone?).
Whoopdeedoo!
My verdict? This movie Almost Sucked.