Knowing [DVD] [2009]

`Knowing' begins in 1959 when an elementary school is celebrating its open by burying a time capsule containing the students' drawings of their thoughts of what the future will look like when its opened again in 50 years time. Instead of doing a drawing, one young girl named Lucinda writes down a series of seemingly random numbers. 50 years later, the time capsule is opened and the drawings are given to the students. A boy named Caleb gets the page containing Lucinda's numbers. His father Jon (Nicolas Cage) is a professor of astrophysics and one night he notices that one of the number sequence is the date of the 9/11 attacks and it's death toll. After spending the night looking into this with the help of the internet, Jon realises that the numbers are all dates and death tolls of major disasters over the past 50 years. However there are 3 dates that are yet to come.

I've been looking forward to seeing this film for absolutely ages and I finally got to see it at the weekend and I would of loved to be writing this review now saying that it was amazing but the last 5 minutes completely let this down. Literally 95% of this film is absolutely perfect, it has everything - mystery, suspense, horror, action. The disaster sequences were some of the most impressive and shocking scenes I've seen in this type of film, the supernatural elements of it were very chilling and quite scary at times, the storyline was very good for a majority of the film with some really good ideas, the acting was excellent especially from Cage who plays his part very believably, it was just the last 5 minutes of the film that ruined this for me. I'm not going to spoil it and say what happened but when I was watching this part I actually thought to myself "are they serious!?" as it is just so ridiculous - people in the cinema were actually laughing!

As well as the bad ending there are a lot of plot holes too but is so exciting and suspenseful that this won't matter. If you like films such as Signs, War of the Worlds, The Happening and The Day After Tomorrow, you will more than likely love this. Personally I thought it was great but if I watched it again (which I will), I may have to switch off before the end as it really did spoil it for me.

Before I purchased this movie I read some of the reviews and they almost put me off, but having now taken the plunge and watched the movie I have to say that I think it was great.

I enjoyed it from the very start and I wasn't disapointed with the ending like some others. The quality of the picture and the sound are amazing, one scene in particular actually dislodged some of my china plates in my display cabinet (luckily none broke), if you want a movie to demonstrate your surround system this is a must.

I'm no Barry Norman so I dont go into detail about movies and give the plot away, I just say what I think with my honest opinion, I want to be entertained and am not bothered about what is plausible, this film will be watched again very soon when my friends come round for the evening.

I have a guilty secret: I really rather enjoyed this film. I know that is wrong of me. On finishing it and recommending it to a friend, he told me it was something to do with scientology. For those in the know, this is apparently quite obvious, but for me it was not clear at all. Instead I just enjoyed the story for what it was.

Some people may think the story was obvious, trite or who knows what. For me, the major plot twist came as a surprise. As such the story captivated me and the special effects were good. I am not sure whether Nicholas Cage is type cast or whether he really cannot act any differently, but in this movie he is much as he always is, for better or for worse.

Things start out with a school girl in the 1950s who is to bury a time capsule holding pictures of how the children see the future. The girl inserts just a page of numbers, and when she is prevented from finishing the page she claws them into a cupboard door instead. fast forward 50 years and the capsule is opened, and a sequence of intriguing and disturbing events follow.

The ending of the movie was perhaps a tad disturbing, but all in all this was a movie that was good enough for me to recommend to others.