Knowing

Photo Credit: Summit Entertainment

Knowing what you’re about to know, you probably won’t see Knowing

The first trailer for Knowing actually made the movie look good. But with each consequential trailer and TV spot, it’s looked worse and worse. And to be completely honest, Knowing isn’t bad until the third act. Until then, it’s quite entertaining.

Fifty years ago, a Massachusetts elementary school asked each student to draw their idea of the future. Their drawings were then put into a time capsule to be opened present day. Instead of drawing a picture, one disturbed student wrote a long list of numbers.

Nicholas Cage plays John Koestler, the scientist father of the boy who received that numeric page during the time capsule opening. Trying to find a meaning to the numbers, Koestler realizes that the numbers show the date of each major catastrophe since it was written, the number of people who die in each case, and the latitude and longitude where the incident takes place. Koestler becomes started when he realizes that there are three events to come over the next few days.

The first half of Knowing is much like The Ring in that Koestler is running around with his kid trying to stop each tragedy from happening and finding the person who wrote the numbers 50 years earlier. The second half is a mix of War Of The Worlds and Armageddon. Knowing is entertaining and suspenseful up until the last twenty minutes of the movie, at which point it becomes just like the second catastrophe Koestler tries to stop – a train wreck. The ending is not only odd and unexplained, but not worthy considering how intense the rest of the movie was.

While Knowing is rated PG-13, it is not made for all audiences. Along with several other critics at our screening, I strongly feel that the images portrayed from each of the disaster sequences are far too graphic, real and disturbing for a PG-13 audience. Be warned that these sequences are not fit for young children.

If you like intense end-of-the-world movies, then you’ll enjoy the majority of the movie. If you’re dead set on seeing Knowing, consider walking out twenty minutes early and making up your own ending. No matter what you imagine happening in the end, it’ll be better than the actual ending.