John Koestler [Nicolas Cage] happens upon this paper that has spent five decades below the surface of the earth in a time capsule at his son’s school. After staring at the paper long enough he realizes a familiar number and begins to form a theory about the page filled with what would seem to be a random string of integers to the layman. A full night later without sleep and lots of research he proves that the entire page has predicted every disaster/incident that has happened for the last fifty years where a mass number of people are killed perfectly with the date and amount of people that will die. He also notices that there are three more predictions left on the page.

I, unlike many other bloggers/critics across the interwebs, do not worship all that is Alex Proyas. However, I doubt I could lie to you and say that he wasn’t the reason I was interested in this movie. Alex Proyas is the director behind geek favourites such as, Dark City [1998] and The Crow [1994], but he also gave me one of my least favourite Will Smith movies I, Robot [2004] and I personally am not a huge fan of Dark City. I thought that the ending for Dark City was bad and a letdown for the film. Here on the other hand, with Knowing, I think the ending was well placed and played by Mr. Proyas. However, I do think that the ending could’ve benefited from a little more editing so as to show less and leave more to our imaginations but it still does well to spark some intellectual conversation between you and whoever you decide to take to this one.

In case you were wondering, YES, Nick Cage is pretty much Nick Cage throughout the film. He overacts a lot of the scenes in the film and he is saved by an interesting plot and some great direction and camera work. There was even some great Matt Reeves style filming during the huge plane crash sequence which I found refreshing. After almost an hour in when we finally reach to the second act and John is searching for this new disaster and it happens the camera immerses us in the madness of what I think is as close as I want to be to a tragedy like that. Whenever horrible incidents like this occurs we always are distanced from it since it’s on the news and it feels sometimes like it’s just always happening, but with that style of camera movement I couldn’t help but feel like I was there – another testament to how amazing Cloverfield was – and that is what I thought made that scene so great to watch.

I couldn’t help but fall in love with the sci-fi elements of the film that appear later on. I feel it difficult to discuss this without spoiling the movie, and since I want you to go out and check out the movie I’ll leave this part at that I liked it.

As I said earlier I thought that the film is best in its third and final act. I loved the ending, and even though I think it would work better with a bit of smart editing it is still a great ending. It is a perfect blend of science-fiction and some religious ideas mixed together to come up with a few interesting thoughts as to what a certain scenario would result in. I always love films/filmmakers that decide to take the chance and say something that not only not everyone will appreciate but even understand on the first viewing. Because I believe one of the biggest factors in the general public ‘liking’ a film it has to be that they ‘get’ it, and get it pretty quickly. Now please don’t misunderstand me and think that I’m saying that I have the cranial powers required to understand all that Proyas was trying to say with this movie’s ending, but I definitely found it interesting and I have a few thoughts on what he meant by it.

This is a movie I will definitely be revisiting in the future to try and decipher it more, but for now let’s just leave it at that it starts out being an okay thriller and ends wonderfully.

IMDB says 7.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 30%

I say 7.5/10