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I haven’t written a review for quite a while. Busy doesn’t begin to describe what I’m going through. In fact, I haven’t read a book in 3 months, which is probably the first time this has happened since I’ve been 5 years old (I read a LOT of books).
So last week, I was happy to see that a new time travel movie (sort off) came out on DVD that I haven’t seen. If I’m not reading time travel books, I may as well watch some movies.
Knowing tells the story of John Koestler, a widower and a father of Caleb. One day, in Caleb’s school, a time capsule is being opened after 50 years in the ground. In case you are not familiar with the term ‘time capsule’. A time capsule is a box that is locked for a specific amount of time. In this case, the box was locked in 1959, and was filled with letters written by children depicting how they envision what the far future would look like (2009). All in all, I think this is a pretty cool idea. My school had something like this when I was 10, we had to envision the year 2000. Feels a bit silly now, doesn’t it? None on the flying cars or robots came into being.
But I digress…
When Caleb opens his letter, he finds a single page filled with numbers. He thinks it’s some kind of a 50 year old prank and doesn’t pay too much attention to it. However, his father – who’s still recovering from the loss of his wife – and as a result is continuously losing himself to alcohol – accidentally peeks at the paper.
What he discovers is that the series of numbers is not random. In fact, it details the date of every single major catastrophe since 1959: the precise date and the number of people who died. Almost all of these events have already occurred except for three. Strangely, there is another set of numbers John can’t fathom.
John becomes obsessed with trying to prevent these last three events from occurring. After the first one occurs right on top of him (yet he manages to survive), he solves out another piece of the puzzle: the last set of numbers is coordinates that define where the event is going to happen.
Armed with this knowledge, he tries to prevent the next catastrophe. I won’t say how this turned out, but I will say that the next – and the last – catastrophe didn’t have any coordinates at all.
Before we started watching with movie I told my wife that based on the trailer I think it’s going to be a somewhat unusual time travel movie. I’m not sure what made me think so, something in it just seemed out of place (and trust me, I know my time travel stories). I was right. Although a large portion of the movie deals with future knowledge and how to prevent it, there is a second story taking place. I don’t want to spoil the movie by revealing what it is about, I’ll just say that it was rather bizarre – and made the movie much less predictable than a Hollywood movie should have been.
All in all, I thought Knowing was a decent film. The only disadvantage – which unfortunately was not too minor – is that it felt the authors were trying to cram two stories into one. The first with the time travel aspect, and the second, with the story elements I have not discussed. As a result, the movie turned out completely unpredictable (the best types of movie for me), however, it was also quite unfocused, and some parts of the plot simply didn’t make any sense. It’s almost like two voices were competing for attention, and in the end some compromise took place (which I’m guessing is what really happened: the studios combine two stories into one).
If you have nothing to do and want to watch a spooky, unpredictable thriller with some time travel elements – go for it. If that’s not your thing, it might be ideal to skip this one.
P.S. I know I haven’t written much (or anything) lately. I still care about this site, but have less time than I ever had. At some point it will resume full activity in one form or another (either I will do it, or will get someone to help me – any volunteers?).
To get Knowing from Amazon click here.
