Knowing

UK Release: 29th March 2009

Watched on Recorded TV: Sunday 20th November 2011

Rating: 15

Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Runtime: 2hrs 1min

Tagline: What Happens When The Numbers Run Out?

IMDb Plot Synopsis: In the fall of 1959, for a time capsule, students draw pictures of life as they imagine it will be in 50 years. Lucinda, an odd child who hears voices, swiftly writes a long string of numbers. In 2009, the capsule is opened; student Caleb Koestler gets Lucinda's "drawing" and his father John, an astrophysicist and grieving widower, takes a look. He discovers dates of disasters over the past 50 years with the number who died. Three dates remain, all coming soon. He investigates, learns of Lucinda, and looks for her family. He fears for his son, who's started to hear voices and who is visited by a silent stranger who shows him a vision of fire and destruction. What's going on?

My Review: This film is hard to pin down exactly. It’s not really a horror, but isn’t ‘thrilling’ either - basically it’s all over the place. It builds up this false tension that leads nowhere, which was pretty frustrating and in general it just wasn’t that scary which was a shame considering how get the concept was. I think if they’d gone for a more psychological thriller and saved the melodramatics and ridiculous special effects it could have worked better. The worse part was how slow it was. Literally nothing happens for a good 30 minutes and it got pretty tedious. The plot was predictable and the ending was completely out of wack with the rest of film it was laughable. I mean,was that supposed to be a good ending because it really wasn’t. It was just depressing and dull with no real explanation. Some parts were creepy and there was a little twist at the end but nothing rave about. 

All this probably wasn’t helped by me not being a fan of Nicholas Cage, who is in pretty much every scene. He wasn’t awful but just not very interesting to watch which is almost worse! In fact if this film had been bad then I maybe would have liked it more in a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of way but it wasn’t. It was just mediocre.

Score: 5/10