The Knowing
Last Friday night, the hubby and I watched The Knowing. Here it is Tuesday, and I’m finally getting around to writing down my thoughts. Efficient, Nightphoenix. Very efficient. Oh well.
I had seen previews for this movie in the theaters, and thought it looked mildly interesting. Only somehow it didn’t seem to stay in the theater very long, and we missed the window. I kind of forgot about it until the hubby’s parents lent the DVD to us.
The hubby said that doomsday movies are overdone, and I tend to agree with him. There are only so many ways you can destroy the world, or almost destroy the world. All the plausible ones (and most of the implausible ones, for that matter) have been explored in film. Plus, everybody already knows the ending before they walk into the theater. The notable doomsday movies are only notable because of some other element within them. Independence Day worked because Will Smith and Jeff Goldbloom carried it. Armageddon, Deep Impact, and similar movies fly because the romantic subplot is interesting enough. Etc.
The Knowing was good for what it was. I have yet to see a Nicholas Cage movie I really dislike, however, so I may be a little biased. The title plays on your expectations, which I appreciated. You think that it’s about “knowing” about these major disasters ahead of time, and it is, but on a deeper level it’s also about “knowing” there’s a purpose to everything that happens. The interpersonal plot was done pretty well. I wish they had devoted a little more time to Abby’s character, because in that scene where the kids are taken away, she seems less like a character and more like a prop. I didn’t care about her the way I cared about Caleb.
This must be a result of having a child of my own, but the moment in the movie where I was the most tense was when the two adults went into that creepy house at night and left the kids sleeping in the car. Alone. With the creepy, still-as-yet ambivalent “whisperers” out there somewhere. I was so worried about those children that I could barely concentrate on what the adults were doing. I’m not sure if that’s what was intended, since what they were doing in the house was kind of important.
I did enjoy the EE = Everyone Else reveal, on the underside of the bed. That was a delightfully creepy moment.
My major problem with this movie is that I ended up disagreeing with the basic premise: aliens foresaw every horrible human event, and our eventual demise, and warned select people so that some of us could be taken to another world and the human race would survive. I can buy the idea that a human might be able to predict the future. I can even buy the idea that an alien could predict the future, and would care enough to intervene. But it would have to be because the alien is sensitive on that level, not simply because he’s an alien. No amount of superior technology can predict future events (especially since a large number of the events predicted, like 9/11, were not caused by natural disasters, but by human free will…what technology can possibly foresee that?)
When it first became obvious that there were aliens involved in the movie, and in the number puzzle, I assumed at first that the aliens were causing all these disasters. I just have a hard time accepting that they could have known about the tragedies unless they were behind them. My credulity was seriously strained when they weren’t. Another human being might be sensitive enough to pick what Osama Bin Laden was planning before 9/11 out of the ether and make a prediction, but an alien? Pick out the time, the place, the number of people who would die? That suggests a familiarity and intimacy with us and our thought patterns that I’m not convinced was there.
It seemed like these aliens could see the future simply by virtue of being aliens. I think maybe you were supposed to assume that they were psychic, since they could “whisper” and stuff, but really, the movie just made them plain creepy. Alien. I was not made to feel they could see the future because they were psychic…I was made to feel they could see it because they were more advanced than us and thus they just “knew” these things. The difference is perhaps minimal, but it did bother me.
Plus, only the last few disasters had anything to do with the solar flare, and that last event. Why would the aliens even bother warning the girl in the beginning about the other disasters, if it was all in preparation for the final one?
I would have been more convinced if the aliens had actually been angels or something like that. The move had them playing that role anyway…why not just make them what they’re pretending to be? Are the producers afraid that angels aren’t “culture and religion-neutral” enough, and aliens are? Does it HAVE to be aliens?? They are so cliche.
The movie also had the problem of a lot of doomsday stories. After the characters discover that the whole planet is in danger, and that there’s nothing that can be done, and that time is running out…then what? The excitement comes from the characters being presented with a problem and then going about trying to solve it. However, in this particular doomsday flick, once the tension of figuring out when and how everyone is going to die is over, the excitement grinds to a halt. Since the characters can do nothing to actually stop the doomsday, someone much more powerful has to save them, or everyone has to die. The storyline practically demands a Deus Ex Machina or a totally depressing ending, neither of which is very satisfying. (Actually, The Knowing employed both types of ending. The children are saved by the powerful, benevolent aliens, and everyone else dies. It still wasn’t completely satisfying.)
Overall, it wasn’t a bad movie. But I think I must be one of those people that are easily amused. I’ve liked a number of movies that the critics have torn to pieces.
I can enjoy a mediocre story for what it is, if it’s entertaining enough. (I just don’t want to write them 
)
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