Wednesday 26 May 2010

Knowing (2009) – movie review

imagesknow Okay, so I am a bit of a closet Nicolas Cage fan. I know he’s done some terrible movies, but he’s one of those men I have always had a bit of a crush on, but wouldn’t really admit to – a bit like Dr Gregory House (for any of you who know the show).

Anyway, when I saw he had made a supernatural movie it was straight on my must-see list.

Knowing starts fifty years in the past.  In a local school the children are drawing pictures to be put in a time capsule.  One little girl is hearing whispered voices, and when time comes to draw the pictures she writes lists of numbers all over both sides of the page.  When the teacher tells her that her time is up she runs away and is later found hiding in a closet.  She has scratched the door so badly all of her fingers are bleeding.

Fast forward fifty years.  Time has come to open the time capsule.  Nicolas Cage’s character is recently windowed and he is left alone with his young son, who attends the same school the girl did.  On the day of opening the capsule the son is given the envelope containing the numbers.

Nicolas Cage somehow recognises the numbers as dates of terrible tragedies, and then his son starts to hear voices and see strange men watching him.  Cage discovers that imageskno the final numbers are predictions and he decides it is his job to stop them from happening.

Knowing starts off really promisingly.  The stuff with the little girl is really creepy, and I almost wish they had stayed with that storyline rather than jumping ahead (but then I guess that would have been a different movie all together!).  Cage plays a decent portrayal of a recently bereaved man, though I did question how quickly he managed to figure out what the numbers meant.  I also had to question the actions of some of the characters, as the daughter of the woman who wrote the numbers makes some bizarre decisions.

The ending was a bit of a disappointment.  Without giving too much away the film seems to lose track of what it wants to be.  It starts off in a spooky, supernatural genre, but finishes as a sci-fi/end-of-the-world disaster movie.  There was even a bit of religious symbolism thrown in for good luck.  It was a shame because I had really enjoyed the movie up to that point.  Also, the ‘people’ following the son looked like grown up ‘children of the corn’, which was a bit off putting.

Despite this I did enjoy the movie overall.  It’s not a scary as I would have liked, but it is worth a watch.

Something Wicked 6 /10

2 comments:

  1. Oh trust us, House is very popular over here!! So funny that Hugh Laurie is now a sex symbol playing a cranky, bad-boy doctor, when he started off as the hapless Bernie Wooster!

    I'm with you on this review, Marissa. I liked how the movie started out, but the ending was just too "huh?" for me.

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  2. My feeling was that time capsules are for burying for hundreds of years and not just to put kiddies pictures in. Not the best film I have seen though yes I can droll over Nick Cage and Gregory House.
    ps Glad he got it together with.....at the series finale.

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