KNOWING

Are things preordained in our universe, or do things happen by chance? And what if we knew what laid ahead? Could we...or would we change things? These are the questions that the movie KNOWING asks.

We start in 1959, as elementary school children are about to fill a time-capsule with drawings of what they imagine 2009 might look like. One of the little girls, Lucinda, fills a sheet of paper with seemingly random numbers instead of drawing a picture. Later, after the ceremonial burying of the time-capsule, Lucinda disappears. Eventually, she is found in a closet in the school basement, scratching numbers into a doorway, afraid and talking about the "whisper people" that she hears.

Flash forward to present day. Nicolas Cage plays John, the widowed father of a young boy, Caleb. Caleb attends the very same elementary school at which the time capsule was buried. Since it is now 2009, the time-capsule is being dug up. Once its opened, the students are each given the drawings that the 1959 children created. Caleb gets Lucinda's paper. He is confused, but then suggests that it might be some sort of puzzle. He doesn't think too much about it though. However, one evening, after a few drinks, John starts to play with the numbers, and discovers that they are dates of major disasters, followed by the number of the death toll for each event. Disturbingly, there are three events listed that have yet to happen.

Up to this point in the movie, John has established himself as not believing in heaven, or life anywhere but on earth. His philosophy in life is that "____ happens", and that there is no meaning or predestination of events. But when the numbers fall into his hands, he begins to question whether or not that happened for a reason - especially after he finds himself at the exact spot of the next event. (this is the point where he realizes that the numbers also list the locations of each event) After that, he goes to the place of the next disaster to see if he can stop it from occurring.

Soon Caleb begins to hear the "whisper people", just as Lucinda had. They tell him that he can go with them if he wants. And these same mysterious strangers begin to show up at various places, watching and waiting. Meanwhile, John figures out that the last numbers written mean that the end of the world will soon arrive. So how do the numbers' predictions and the mysterious whisper people tie in with each other?

I don't want to ruin the whole movie for you if you're going to watch it, so suffice it to say that there is a lot of Christian symbolism here, but just inaccurate enough to make it weird. The movie was good - lots of action and suspense. The story was intriguing, but the ending was just strange enough to make you wonder if someone had read the bible, but wasn't really paying attention while they read.