Alex Proyas’ movie career has been marked by atmospheric, intelligent and often dark-toned genre movies made within the Hollywood studio system, like THE CROW, DARK CITY and I ROBOT. His latest, KNOWING, is a sometimes corny, sometimes extraordinary $50 million feature length TWILIGHT ZONE episode that refreshingly has the courage of its convictions. This courage helps overcome some fairly standard blockbuster shortcomings – most notably, the awkwardness of CGI fire – will they ever learn that it just looks fake?!
In 1959, the pupils of a Massachusetts elementary school create time capsules made up of their drawings. One little girl creates a sheet consisting entirely of a series of apparently random numbers, and freaks out when she’s interrupted. Fifty years later, atheist science professor Nicolas Cage, widowed thanks to a tragic hotel fire, is the boozing father of a lad at the same school who happens to be the recipient of the little girl’s time capsule. Cage catches on that the numbers all relate to the dates and locations of every major world disaster of the past decades : key ones being Lockerbie, the Tsunami and, of course, 9/11. There are also figures relating to disasters that are about to happen. Cage researches the background of the girl with the remarkable foresight, finding her grown up daughter (Rose Byrne), whose own forecasted demise is imminent.
Likeably off-the-chain at times, this is a sincere, old-fashioned genre piece with regular shifts in direction to keep a cynical contemporary audience on their toes. It begins as a variation on Joel Schumacher’s eccentric horror drama THE NUMBER 23, with a heavy dose of the FINAL DESTINATION franchise in its musings on pre-destined fatalities and the one guy who strives (unsuccessfully) to prevent them.
When the movie looks like it’s going to turn into another spin on THE DEAD ZONE / FINAL DESTINATION concept of a dogged hero attempting to avoid the disasters he knows are coming, it takes a detour and enforces the fact that there is nothing he can do to stop the (ultimately) apocalyptic horrors predicted by the supernaturally gifted little girl. By the end, a very Shyamalan-like twist takes the flick into end-of-the-world disaster movie territory and eventually full-blown sci-fi, complete with other-worldly beings and a teary sentimental climactic “good-bye” directly echoing E.T.!
KNOWING’s genre-melding is one of its main pleasures. Whatever you think of the movie, at least it’s not one-note. There are horror shadings : notably genuinely creepy scenes of emotionless, blonde, black-clad strangers invading or surrounding Cage’s house with a mysterious desire to take his son. The disaster movie elements provide two spectacular scenes of catastrophic accidents : an alarming plane crash with quite disturbing scenes of staggering victims on fire, and an elaborately destructive subway train collision. The second half diverts into ominous solar-flare territory that in narrative terms has pleasing echoes of the still-underrated Brit thriller THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE. All this, plus an infusion of pro-Christian Hallmark movie-of-the-week, with Cage coming to accept the existence of Heaven after two hours that also enable him to mend his broken relationship with his estranged parents at just the right time.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Most impressive of all is the underlying grimness of the whole. Ignore the saccharine father-son farewell, the angelically-winged benevolent aliens and the shampoo commercial-like wheat-dominated “new world” of the postscript, and you’re left with a big Hollywood production that climaxes with The Complete Destruction of the Earth! The bitter pill is softened by the aforementioned affirmation of Heaven and the ethereal presence of intelligent extra terrestrials, but for once the movie stays true to its premise and refuses to cop out in the final furlong. Some of the most surprising, powerful and subversive moments of recent PG-13 rated blockbuster history can be found in KNOWING, with awesome, shocking climactic scenes of Cage driving through burning, looted streets as cities melt away in front of our eyes. “Knowing” means nothing in this film’s world because there’s nothing anyone can do about the fiery fate awaiting us all.
END OF SPOILERS
It’s certainly Cage’s best film in ages (talk about damning with faint praise!), though his characteristically peculiar performance still walks a tightrope between being convincingly eccentric and pure ham-acting. The role allows him to be a comedy drunk, a persistent crackpot, a bad if well intentioned father, a grief-stricken widow and, in one memorable instant, an open-mouthed, awe-struck everyday Joe dropping to his knees as he is confronted by something paranormal. There are amusing echoes of Kiefer Sutherland’s comical Jack Bauer-infused turn in the recent MIRRORS, as Cage frequently acts like a Total Batshit Crazy Person : dashing head first (and somehow escaping unharmed) into a plane crash site as debris soars in every direction, stealing a door from a school, ranting about numbers to anyone who’ll listen, shouting at everyone in the second half….Still, at least he’s not dull to watch.
KNOWING is undeniably overwrought, sometimes borderline unintentionally funny and while most of its visual FX are spectacular, it does feature an embarrassing CGI moose-on-fire moment that should have been nixed in post-production. Nonetheless, it’s also expertly paced, bold when it needs to be and embraces its combination of disaster-spectacle and religious iconography with the vigor and conviction that George Pal would have heartily approved of.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
