Knowing

My mum used to work with a bunch of people who ranked movies by how much better they were than Stargate. There’s now a new contender for that honorable position.

Do not, under any circumstances, go see the movie Knowing. It’s the new Nicolas Cage movie, which in many circles is enough to put you off seeing it, but it is seriously bad. Really and truly. Awful. Awful awful awful.

Under no circumstances.

SMH reviewed it as ’sinfully awful’, which is probably kind. [video link].

Let me explain. Kristy and I are part of ClubInk, as subscribers to FilmInk magazine. This means that we get a double pass to the movie of the month, which tends to be an advance screening somewhere. It’s a great thing to join up to, as we’ve seen a lot of movies we otherwise wouldn’t have gone to: Persepolis, Run Fatboy Run, Away From Her, Blindness, and a bunch more.

Presumably the idea is that film buffs are the types that subscribe to the magazine and get these tickets. They go see the movie before it is widely released, talk about it to their friends, who respect their opinion because they’re film buffs, and the movie gets an extra tier of word-of-mouth marketing.

This time, that strategy backfired a little.

Last night, Chris and I went to see Knowing (a ‘gnostic parable‘). It is almost unspeakably bad. From the little non-sensical details, to the relentlessly wooden characters, to the plot that starts out as slightly promising, gets quickly stupid, and ends up as a disaster.

There are three redeeming moments in the film, all of them spectacular action sequences:

• a plane crash
• a subway accident
• the final destruction of the earth [still looking for a link]

That’s right – they’re on youtube, so you can watch them there. I repeat: do not see this movie.
(A quick note about the above youtube links: some of the destruction is pretty graphic. The squeamish amongst you: consider yourselves warned.)

If you’re still thinking that it might be a good idea to go see this movie, allow me to reveal all the relevant plot points. This movie is meant to be a thriller, so knowing what happens means you don’t need to see it, right? Here we go:

• Time capsule buried 50 years ago, containing pictures of the future by school kids.
• Time capsule dug up in the present day.
• Nic Cage’s kid gets page full of numbers, not a pretty picture.
• Hero of story (Nic Cage’s character) figures out numbers are prophecy, detailing every major disaster: date, location, and number killed.
• Kid starts hearing strange whispering, and seeing ghost-like strange men.
• 2 major disasters happen, as predicted by list.
• Next disaster on the list is the total destruction of earth by a massive solar super-flare (Nic Cage happens to be an astrophysics professor). Number dead this time round: EE (Everyone Else).
• Nic Cage & Rose Byrne and their respective son & daughter travel to the home of the woman who wrote the original prophecy.
• Aliens come to greet them, and take away the son & daughter to start over again.
• Yep, aliens.
• I was really hoping it wasn’t going to be aliens, but then they went and showed up.
• They come down in this big spinny spiky UFO thing.
• Boy and girl are given a rabbit each, and taken off to a different planet, which looks remarkably like Middle Earth/the Garden of Eden/New Zealand. I assume they’re meant to learn from the rabbits.
• The sun blows up, and everyone on earth dies.
• Seriously.

Add to that some creepiness in the characterisation, a truckload of ham-fisted religious symbolism, and (admittedly good in places) special effects.

This movie is the worst thing I’ve seen since Daredevil. Which we stopped after 25 minutes and broke the DVD in half.

Don’t see it.

Are we clear?