Oh. My. God.

Rating: 2/10 (2 July 2009)

This movie is bad in every way it is possible for a movie to be bad, and even invents a few new ones. I don't have a problem with the Aliens-are-Angels / Bible-is-History tripe, though god knows it's been done to death - no sci-fi editor would ever accept this kind of hackneyed rubbish at two cents a word. But this movie doesn't even make SENSE.
* What's with the sheet of numbers that kicks off the whole story? We never find out. Why was this 'message' provided? (Never mind HOW.) And why in this peculiar way?? They numbers are almost impossible to decipher - surely super-powerful aliens (or angels from heaven) could have provided the information in a clearer form! (Even punctuation would have helped.) But either way, what's the point? Even once deciphered - by the wildest accident - it's clear that no one can actually do anything about this information. And it certainly has nothing to do with the resolution of the story.
* Why does the girl in 1959 hide in the school basement and scratch her last few numbers in a door, instead of writing them down? Couldn't she find a pencil? And more importantly, why does she write all the death tolls as numbers, EXCEPT the very last one?? And why does she write just that one not only backwards (!!) but in some sort of l33t shorthand that pretty much guarantees anyone reading it would misinterpret it as "33"???
* Why do ALL the other numbers refer to disasters, yet the very last one refer to an all-important rescue location? In fact, why bother specifying this rescue location, when the angels/aliens are apparently quite happy to grab the kids and take them there? Was it actually important for someone to get this 'message'? (And if so, why make it so $!@$%* hard to read???)
* Later on, when Cage finds his son scribbling down numbers, why why WHY does he interrupt him?? (He actually tears the sheet of paper from under the kid's pencil.) At this point, Cage knows how important these numbers are. Wouldn't a further message be exactly what he'd want??
* When Cage tries to save the two families, why does the mother first believe him then arbitrarily disbelieve him? Why do we spend twenty vital minutes in the last act of the movie watching Cage chasing her around?? Isn't this is a really, really annoying distraction from any huge plot about aliens / angels / the end of the world?
* Why do the mysterious aliens/angels save only children? (And bunnies???) They seem powerful enough; why not save hundreds, or even thousands of educated experts? (Or dolphins? Or earthworms?) Why not deflect the solar flare? (They seem amply capable of such deeds.) And why wander around in the dark, scaring people before saving them? What do these men (no women) - or the events of the film - have to do with Biblical prophecies? Have these creatures been here before? Did they plant premonitions? If so, why??
* What's the deal with the black rocks? They don't match any legend or Biblical reference I can think of. They have no obvious symbolic meaning. They don't even have any clear role within the plot (such as it is). The aliens/angels give one to the boy, which makes it seem special, a message maybe, or an amulet of some sort. Yet we later find them under the crazy lady's bed, and strewn ankle-deep in the woods. Hunh??
* Why does the abandoned Cage suddenly seem to get Religion? (Or at least Faith.) Aliens came and saved his son. Cool. But it proves nothing about the universe in general. Human civilization is being arbitrarily destroyed. Not cool. In fact, such a monumentally hard thing to accept, it's very likely to make one flee to some sort of illusory refuge. Proves nothing, except that humans are weak and the Universe is full of arbitrarily cruel events. As Cage says right at the start: "basically, sh*t just happens." In this film, it certainly does.
I guess devoutly religious viewers won't be put off by the lack of logic. But this isn't religion, it's fiction. How could tens of millions of dollars in hard Hollywood cash come to be squandered in filming such an appalling mess of a script? 'Knowing' makes M Night Shyamalan look like Stanley Kubrick. Did Proyas think he was expressing some genuine Christian spiritual revelation? If so, then he should realize that the fervor of one's beliefs doesn't magically negate all the basic laws of dramatic structure.
I've been a huge fan of Proyas' previous work - not just Dark City, but also the enormously under-rated I Robot. Hopefully, with Knowing he's gotten something off his chest, and he'll be ready to go back to just making movies, as opposed to delivering apocalyptic revelations.