Visitors Review

J. Fallon (2012-01-31 15:19)

Been a fan for a long time . . .

I have been a fan of Nicholas Cage since "Raising Arizona" :Trapped in Paradise: and "The Rock." As you can tell a long time. This movie just was plain weird. You can probably tell by most of the reviews that the movie is pretty cool, yet predictable up until the last half hour. Cage plays a good role, but the script is crap! You might recognize Chandler Canterbury from Benjamin Button, or that really creepy episode of Criminal Minds; He plays a naive boy that can't figure out that the voices that are whispering in his head are aliens. Overall the movie sucks, I only give it two stars, because Nicholas Cage did a pretty good acting job in it.

Victoria (2012-01-31 07:22)

knowing the end is coming for everyone.

I thought this movie was intertaining and suspenseful. If you like a mix of religious and scientific reasoning, this would be a movie to get to know.

ninjasuperstar (2012-01-27 05:22)

Cross a really expensive episode of "Numb3rs" with a fist fight in a world religions and myths bookstore, and you have Knowing

Whenever Roger Ebert makes an extraordinary claim ("Knowing is among the best science-fiction films I've seen") about something so mediocre and hackneyed as this film, I question the great Answer Man's remaining powers. I generally agree with him, but Ebert is dead wrong about this entertaining but ludicrous film.The movie is a mash of science fiction and religious ideas about the end of the earth: a rather transparent numerology, the foresight of seers, the receptiveness of chosen ones, an advanced alien race that communicates telepathically, Armageddon, and a bit of the unexplained (those stupid pebbles). How many times and in how many ways have these plagiarized ideas and character types been arranged?Further, the director, Alex Proyas, cannibalizes his own material--the alien race from Dark City--which is an excellent sci-fi noir. Proyas was also successful with The Crow, the first movie to actually look like a graphic novel in motion, as opposed to a film. What separates Proyas' successes from Knowing is that Knowing doesn't have an interesting style and it doesn't stick to one set of myths (hence the mashing). Another failure is that Knowing attempts to make science fiction more like science, which isn't the case at all. And is the audience to believe that an MIT professor has fifth-grade dialogues about the composition of the sun with his students? Really?As much as I think the film is dumb, it is entertaining, and that accounts for something. Nicolas Cage (who seems to be channeling his character Ben Sanderson from Leaving Las Vegas) is intense and engaging as professor John Koestler. Rose Byrne also gives an excellent performance as Diana Wayland. To say much more would reveal too much of the film.Rent this if you like disaster sci-fi and want to be entertained, but don't expect to learn anything you don't already know.

eladio (2012-01-26 15:45)

intresting,enjoyable, not for the closedminded

this movie was excellent ..., had its elements , explores much on the mystery on how we might of came to be....took me by surprise the way the whole ending came upon , thoeries, or randomness , thought it was just going to be about a guy and predictions...nope it digged deep ,, I watch alot of cnn and national geo , discovery , history , so much of the stuff there sounded familiar even solar flares , just dumb people dont bother to watch some history so they put lame comments

Wkout (2012-01-26 02:33)

Cage

The Movie was terribly dissapointing with acting that was not convincing. One of the worst from Nicholas Cage in my opinion. The special effects were good in parts but overall would not give a rating better than C-.

J. B. Hoyos (2012-01-25 19:36)

Knowing When The World Is Going To End Can Be Terrifying!

"Knowing" is superb Apocalyptic horror from director Alex Proyas ("I, Robot" and "The Crow.") It combines Biblical prophesy, extraterrestrial phenomenon and astronomical science to create an incredibly unique, suspenseful plot. The grisly depiction of disasters will leave you breathless. Nicholas Cage's performance is one of his best yet. In 1959, Lucinda suggests to her teacher that her class plant a time capsule filled with drawings of what the future holds. In lieu of robots and spacecraft, the strange girl scribbles numbers that appear to be random. Fifty years later, the capsule is unearthed. Lucinda's paper is given to Caleb, son of MIT professor John Koestler (Cage). The professor makes a startling discovery. The numbers are dates for disasters that have occurred around the world over the past fifty years. There are also dates for disasters yet to happen, including one that will be the Biblical Apocalypse. This strange film is very provocative. It asks the questions: How will the world end? When will it end? Sometimes it's better not to know. I always thought mankind would be destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. However, a natural disaster - perhaps like the one that caused the dinosaurs to become extinct - could destroy us. Will there be hope for mankind's survival - and from where and from whom will this hope come? "Knowing" is a great disaster film for fans of Apocalyptic horror such as the modern "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" or the classic "When Worlds Collide."

Randy (2012-01-23 20:23)

Total Scientology movie.

Total Scientology movie.1. Aliens are Angels, just like Scientology teaches.2. Kids draw pictures of God over the Angels.3. Crazy lady was never called crazy.4. No ad placement. No smoking. No one holding a coke. Nothing. No one would want their ad placement in a scientology movie.Never heard of Any of the begging production companies.

Jay Harris(sirbossman6969@yahoo.com) (2012-01-23 15:50)

I ignored the ridiculous story as I do not take Sci-Fi films seriously.

Alex Proyas capably directed this not very good screenplay by RyceDouglas Pearson & Juliet Snowden.Since I also am not a Sci-Fi devotee nor am a believer in theapocalypse,I ignored the unbelievable script, sat back & liked thegoings on. There are fine special effects especially a subway wreckingscene. The director does crown scenes very well.Now even though the action is supposed to be in the Boston area, nearlythe entire film was made in Australia.Nicolas Cage is the lead & he does his usual proficient job. he is theonly well known actor in the film.Rose Byrne is main female in the cast & is good.Two nine year oldchildren are prominently cast. Chandler Canterbury is excellent asNic's son. Lara Robinson also same age has a double role.If you enjoy ridiculous Sci-Fi you may like it better than I. Just sitback & enjoy this apocalyptic vision.Ratings: ***(out of 4) 82 points (out of 100) IMDb 7 (out of 10)

MisterMusicFan (2012-01-23 08:25)

Not flawless, but a highly satisfying thriller

Nicolas Cage hasn't had much luck in the land of the mainstream in recent years, and frothy duds along the lines of Next and Ghost Rider certainly haven't done much to alter this pattern. Enter Knowing, a sci-fi flick that took a very similar marketing approach to Cloverfield, releasing mysterious, subject-veiling trailers which left the viewers wondering exactly what sort of movie it was they were previewing. It is, in theory, a dangerously hit-or-miss approach to advertising, but it may be appropriate in this case. Knowing's opening scene occurs in the mid-50's, with an elementary school teacher explaining to her students that they must draw a picture of what they believe the future will be like and then place the drawings in a time capsule, which will be opened several years from then. A seemingly disturbed little girl has other plans. Rather than drawing a picture of the future, she furiously jots down a series of numbers, and we are given an indication that she is hearing voices telling her to do so. At the actual burying of the time capsule, the girl vanishes, only to be discovered in a hallway closet by her teacher as she continues to scribble the numbers onto the closet door with her fingernails; she then tearfully asks her teacher to `make it stop.' Fast-forward several years later, and we are of course at the reopening of this time capsule, and of course our protagonist-or, more accurately, the protagonist's son-obtains the mysterious little girl's list of numbers. Cage's character, the recently widowed astrophysicist John, doesn't believe there's any significance to the scribbled number sequence, but of course the wild series of events that follows proves otherwise. One fateful night, John happens to notice a pattern to the numbers-that they align with the dates of nearly every major global disaster and tragedy since the date it was written-plus a handful that haven't happened yet. John then goes through the by-the-numbers sequence of trying to get everyone else to believe him, which of course throughout the majority of the movie no one does. But when the first disaster that the number sequence predicts actually happens, John gains a deeper understanding of what he's come across. All the while, Caleb continuously comes across a pale-faced, trenchcoated man who seems to be the source behind mysterious voices ringing in his head and a series of horrifying visions of chaos and destruction. Knowing does an excellent job of keeping the audience's attention, and most shreds of plot predictability are drowned out by the sheer mystery and suspense that pulses throughout the entirety of the film. Knowing is an action-thriller (with more thrill than action), but it also succeeds at maintaining strong undertones of eeriness and dread, and in that light it nearly comes off as a high-class pseudo-horror film; it's the subtle, slow burn type of horror moviegoers don't see much of nowadays. M. Night Shyamalan should be taking notes. One of Knowing's strongest assets is the one thing it has that most movies of its kind don't: genuine shock value. Knowing is shocking until its very end (which is particularly shocking, not in exactly what happens, but what happens to the story's characters), and although the movie's `big picture' might head in the general direction of what viewers might predict, it's unlikely that the final outcome of the characters will be expected. Nicolas Cage is the star, but he may be the film's weakest link. Cage's occasionally awkward, cheeseball approach to acting is at times an ill fit for this particular role, and it leaves one to wonder what the movie could've been in different, more capable hands. Regardless, the film works in nearly every other aspect, and it keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, guessing what'll happen next, like any good horror/action/thriller flick should. Knowing is a movie about tragedy, so it's only natural that many of its events are indeed tragic, but it does a much better job of maintaining a sense of hope in the wake of tragedy than wholly miserable movies like Premonition and 28 Weeks Later did. In the murk of today's teenybop horror and torture porn, Knowing actually does what the likes of The Happening set out to do, and it does it in a much more tasteful and much less melodramatically morbid manner. It's a rarity in the 00's: an end-of-the-world movie that actually works.

Yahoo! Movies User (2012-01-23 04:39)

spiritual with a sci-fi veneer

Frankly, this was the best damn movie I've seen for some time: it was really about faith, family,despair, Providence, eternity,love, sacrifice, et al. While I can't quite recommend it as a crash course on Christian eschatology, still it is alternately spooky, suspenseful, disturbing, and in the end, hopeful(with an eye to the hereafter for the bulk of humanity). In short, a sobering and thought-provoking film which understandably would provoke some of the denigrating and vitriolic reviews it has induced precisely because of the themes adduced above. I thought it was stirring and gripping with the action and characters seeming quite real for such an apocalyptic plot.

Zach (2012-01-20 20:32)

Terribly depressing, over the top, and just...

Disturbing.Seriously, I thought this would be good because it has Mr. Cage in it... wrong!The movie starts off great. I'll give it that. Great suspense (creepy guys in suits, weird black rocks, numbers) then just goes downhill. Another reviewer said it great: It's like they took the ending out of another movie.SPOILERS!If you just want to know what happens without watching the movie, here you go:Nick Cage (John) and his son Caleb find a message that's been buried underground for 50 years. Each number shows the date, place, and death count of a catastrophe. The last date has "EE" written next to it, which means "everyone else". Yeah. Apocalypse. In the end, John ends up meeting with the guys in suits, who take his son and a friend's daughter. Into space. Yes, the suit guys are aliens. They are also apparently the most merciless, nonsentimental creatures in existence, because they take John's child away from him, as he's crying. I don't know why they didn't take the dad too, because he can't possibly be a threat. It turns out that a bunch of children are taken to another planet and left there. Then, everyone on earth is exploded by a huge solar flare. Yep. That's the ending. A little over the top, eh?

tjacobs1945 (2012-01-20 06:19)

I had a difficult time deciding if this movie should get 2 or 8 stars

Evaluating this movie is, for me, rather difficult. If a movie is to bejudged only on what transpires from the opening to closing credits, Iwould be willing to have given "Knowing" perhaps six or seven stars.The seven stars would come from a great beginning, a nifty sort ofmystery that unfolded at a reasonable pace--and then an ending that washorrible not so much because of the calamity factor but because itcompletely nullified the entire point of the preceding part of themovie.I am beginning to become convinced that for a movie to rate more thanfive stars it has to give the viewer something more than two hours ofdiversion. Such a movie should give the viewers something to thinkabout or relate to their own life or ponder "What would I do in thissituation", and so on.THE REST OF THIS REVIEW IS RIFE WITH ***SPOILERS*** How to deal withthe death of a spouse, maintaining a healthy, single-parentrelationship with a son, or even "What would I do if my child broughthome a cryptic 50-year-old message" can draw an audience in and, infact, this part of the movie was well done. But the ending nullifiedall of this and, in fact, gave the first 9/10 of the movie all themeaning of a mouse running in one of those circular treadmills. All his(Nicholas Cage's) running around, getting involved in twodisasters--even his rescuing of a few people from a plane crash was, bythe end of the movie-and-world, completely pointless. Even his dramaticreading of the fingernail-scratched door was important only after onetakes a "suspend belief pill" that will allow the viewer to accept thefact that only way a super-powerful alien race can rescue two childrenis to assume that the kids will be at a certain place at a certaintime--as described in old scratchings on a door.The other thing that bothered me was the lack of logic. Here are someexamples: The "aliens" seem to know our future--including the "end ofthe world" calamity. They knew 50 YEARS (at least) in advance that asolar flare was going to scour all life from the earth. They hadtremendous powers. Did they use that power to build (or have us Terransbuild) some sort of solar flare shield? Did they decide to evacuate asmany people as they could during that 50 years? No. They decided torescue two (or, perhaps, a few more) children that had not even beenborn yet.Why did they "call" (i.e., rescue) only children? And only a few ofthem, at that.The whole movie was based on the message from 1959. But it ultimatelyhad no point whatsoever. By suspending lots of belief, it could havebeen for the purpose of getting two children to the space craft pickuppoint. But even there it was not relevant--the aliens DROVE thechildren to the proper place.Why did they say "no" to the father of one of the children? For thatmatter, why did they say "OK" to a pair of rabbits? (After five years,the rabbits probably outnumbered people on the new world about tenmillion to one.) Why the drama about the pebbles around the pickuppoint? They (but not dirt, etc.) seemed to be affected by the spacecraft's propulsion but they otherwise did nothing.The movie had a great premise and (until near the end) continuinginterest. My feeling while walking out of the theater--and now, a fewdays later--was like I watched an exciting football game. Then all theplayers were shot.

johnwood2 (2012-01-18 18:48)

An Ending To Sleep To

I read a couple of reviews and one said the movie needed to be 10 minutes shorter.... Lol I have to agree totally. This movie was doing well till the Ending. Id say it was running at a good B+ until till the end. And why were people running around with boxes when the end was getting near lol.... were they packing?????

Gerald (2012-01-18 04:47)

Maybe the critics didn't get their checks

This movie deserves at least an A-. A great, plausible plot, talented acting, realistic special effects used to enhance, rather than carry the movie (as happens in so many sci-fi flicks). I could go on and on, but I think this is the best Nick Cage movie in a while. It's a little long, but the ride is worth your time.

erikvw (2012-01-18 04:54)

I'm not sure how most are coming to their evaluation but...

The acting in this was simply atrocious. Rose Byrne screaming after herdaughter when her car is taken from the gas station was painful, andnot in a heart wrenching way.Nic Cage dropping to his knees when he realizes he cannot go with hisson was almost as painful.There were a few moments of solid performance from everyone involved,Lara Robinson most notably had quite a few chilling moments. NadiaTownsend as well in her brief appearances.The concept and visual effects make this worth seeing on the bigscreen, but immediately following the wonderfully done airplane crashyou have a Keanu Reeves worthy moment with Nic Cage yelling "HEY! HEY!"at someone completely engulfed in flames. I realize that shock wouldset in at the witnessing of that event but it came off terribly.

Teemacs (2012-01-17 12:15)

Nearly the silliest film I've ever seen...

...I'm struggling hard to think of one sillier, but for the moment I can't. It has some faint echoes of Arthur C. Clarke's classic "Childhood's End", but the faint echoes are drowned out by all the other dross.It probably deserves one star for some impressive SFX (the realisation of Ezekiel's "wheels within wheels" vision, the discombooberation of the planet), but it would be nice if Hollywood would learn that SFX are no replacement for a decent storyline and some decent characterisation. This had neither. Some of Biblically-derived imagery and typical American schmaltz is downright ludicrous, especially at the end. And as for the babbling numbers girl at the beginning...View only if the alternatives are a party political broadcast or a visit to the dentist.

Jonathan (2012-01-16 03:43)

whats up with the rabbits!?

i usually dont do reviews but this movie was very....interesting. It wasnt amazing but yet it wasnt bad. Somethings could be explained better. The visuals could have been a tad bit more realistic, but the acting made up for it. It is defenitely not your usual end of the world movie. the ending is completely unexpected, n could be seen as biblical in a way. ONly two questions i have are Why could the dad go with the kid yet the damn rabbit could!? and are there other kids in the other world...

akkoziol (2012-01-16 00:06)

Did the director leave 3/4 the way into this movie?

I, like many people, saw the trailers and read the blogs about theconcept and story behind this movie. In a nutshell, I can sum up thewriter's intent: the universe is cruel and doesn't give a rat'sposterior about you.Moving onward, Cage was no the best guy to play the main character andthe backstories could have been fleshed out a bit more. Too much focusis placed on the "numbers" and Cage's character should be MUCH moreskeptical of the numbers since he's this brilliant scientist professor.But I must admit that although the story kept me interested enough tosee it through the whole way, the last 15 minutes of the film...did thedirector walk off the job and they put some shlub in there to finish upthe rest? I did not like the ending but I am glad that some directorsout there don't always end their movies on a happy note. I think it'ssupposed to leave you with something to think about as you walk out thedoor but it fell short for me.Good concept for a movie but the execution wasn't so great.

super m (2012-01-14 15:54)

Good movie, but very depressing.

The title says it all. This is the kind of movie that you feel depressed after you see it. You don't want your money back, but you just wished you didn't see it. The problem with this movie is what's good about predicting future disasters if you can't change them. Absolutely bad plot.

R.K (2012-01-14 12:32)

seriously...?

This movie was the worst movie I have ever seen. There was nothing in this movie, that was based on religion as far how the end of the world should be.... The ending was hysterical, sort of a "happy ending" type and "War of the" mixed in together. The time capsule, supposedly has the world's worst disasters (such as WWI & WWII so and so), and of course the American propaganda of 9/11 couldn't be left out and then the main character experiences a plane crash near him and a metro wreck ( note: all based in New York)? Are those considered the world's worst disasters as yell? Weird movie, weird perception of angels and heaven and "the end of the world". A total miss if u ask me. Although not a fan of his work,a movie, like this should have been directed by Mel Gibson. Would have come out 10 times better. This movie sucked. It was a pain watching it. Not worth your time.