Knowing (2009) Director: Alex Proyas

I'm a big fan of end of the world stuff and prophecies so was excited by the idea of Knowing, a film where scientist/academic Nicolas Cage receives a series of seemingly random numbers through his son being given an envelope out of a time capsule at his school. Unfortunately Knowing is a complete turkey and is completely absurd, plummeting towards a laughable and silly conclusion. It's confused and has so many holes in its plot.

There's some huge disaster scenes (including the biggest one of all) where the carnage actually feels distasteful. Nicolas, as John Koestler, stumbles around the crash scene of an airplane, trying to help screaming, burning victims as they are engulfed by fireballs. He is also powerless against a huge subway disaster where 170 people get squashed by an out of control train. It just doesn't sit very well. These disaster scenes seem like bad taste although you never actually see much; compared to the out and out gore of some schlok horror where you know what you're getting, this is actually more nasty.

If the film had stuck to prophecies, it would have been okay. But the film turns into something else entirely. Some eerie strangers start hanging around John's son and when it is revealed who...or what...they actually are, this is when Knowing gets reallllllyyyy stupid. The huge gaps appear; what are the intentions of these strangers? Where have they come from? Why have they 'chosen' the people they have? Where are they going? Why do they even care? And why the heck is the film called Knowing?! Nicolas Cage 'knows' what is going to happen but this is a really lame title...he knows but who cares...it should have been called something like 'Prophecy' or 'The End of The World is Nigh but we're all f**ked anyway'.

Please don't waste your time watching this.

1/5