I know you’ll like ‘Knowing’

Wed, 04/01/2009 - 9:23am
By: Kevin Thomas

John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) is a professor at M.I.T. who is raising his son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) by himself because of his wife’s sudden death. Besides his sister, Grace (Nadia Townsend) who always is offering help, John has no one else to help raise Caleb.

At Caleb’s elementary school, the students are shown a time capsule that was buried 50 years ago. It is filled with the ideas from the early students on what the future would look like. There are pictures of rocket ships and other things. Caleb gets a sheet of paper with what seem to be random numbers on it and is confused by this.

When John sees the numbers, he starts categorizing them and discovers that the numbers are dates of horrible occurrences in the history of the U.S. It includes the number of people who will die in each incident, and the coordinates of the event, including 9/11. John knows something is up when he finds this, so he tries to find out who wrote the dates. It was apparently done by a girl who seemed to be hearing voices all the time when she was little. ohn sets out to save the people who are going to die when the next events occur.

John also finds single mother Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne), daughter of the original creepy girl, and her daughter, Abby (Lara Robinson). When both Caleb and Abby seem to start hearing voices, John and Diana try to figure out what is going on before it is too late. To add to the pressure, Diana’s mother also told her as a child that Oct. 19 (three days away) would be her dying day.

This movie is filled with intense “action sequences” I guess you could call them. The film is also very loud, so bring earplugs. Some scary material is present. The first 10 minutes will most likely scare younger children, because the opening credits are creepy and the first thing we hear are ghost-like voices. Three minutes after that, we see a girl emerge from a closet with mildly bloody fingers while dramatic “Sixth-Sense” like music is played in the background. Later in the film, we see several people burn up into flames. Another scene is the subway station, where a train suddenly speeds through, knocking over some people. This is all done with computer animation, but it’s so loud and real-looking that some people might not be able to tell the difference. Some characters have sinister Voldemort-like faces with scary voices. Some strong language is also present, but most of it occurs in a scene very early in the film.

I hope you to decide not to take your small child with you to this film.

If you are an adult who is into movies with said material, you will like this movie. The violence is almost nonstop once the film gets going, so be prepared for a few jump scenes. I regrettably had to go to the bathroom after drinking a medium Sprite, so I missed some of the ending, but based on what I saw and what my sister said, I give Knowing 3.5 stars.

Rated PG-13 for frightening images, disaster sequences, and brief strong language.

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