Not knowing

Rating: 4/10 (9 February 2014)

Alex Proyas' Dark City is one of my favorites, so I came to this film with great expectations. It started out very promising for the first half.
MIT mathematician Nicholas Cage catches on to the fact that numerical sequences scribbled by tortured schoolchildren have a deeper meaning: they seem to mark casualty numbers and dates of major and minor cataclysmic events from wars to airline crashes. As he investigates, there are many exciting set pieces: a plane crash really close up, burning deer wailing in a burning forest, mysterious government people - or aliens? The last of the numbers on the list is scary: the whole Earth's population. And the date is not too far in the future.
At this point I was very impressed, thinking Proyas has done it again.
Once expectations are built up high, the whole house of cards falls apart: the Earth will be destroyed by a gigantic solar flare, a cathartic cleansing for the evils of humanity, and aliens who see the big one coming, as they do all disasters, are going to save a handful of children, so they can live on a fresh zoo planet with grass that looks like a landscape made of wool. Why make these poor children go through such pain? Why write down the numbers? Why save so few when you can save so many? Why wait 'til the last second when you have decades to execute your plan? And didn't anyone ever tell you about the butterfly effect, which makes it impossible to make such predictions for open dynamical systems? The loose ends range from silly to unnecessary, and leave the moviegoer with a very dissatisfied taste in their mouth.
It's a 4/10 for good production values and a great first half, but unlike your typical mediocre 5/10 action flick, such as the Neeson vehicle "Non-Stop," this movie is a real let-down at the end, and that's another star off. It reminds me very much of "The Arrival," another Aliens-Infiltrate-Earth movie that starts out great and mysterious, and then falls apart at the end.