Could turn you off going to the pictures forever...

Rating: 3/10 (5 May 2009)

This film should have been much better than it is. In fact, the premise is quite intriguing: A time capsule is opened and found to contain a page of seemingly meaningless numbers written by a strangely spooky girl 50 years ago. By chance, a professor discovers that the numbers are the dates, locations and the number of the dead of disasters around the world since the time that the capsule was buried. And there are some major disasters just around the corner, including (as we find out about two-thirds of the way through the film) the end of the world.
By the time your bum is well and truly sore (this film drags on for two hours), you eventually discover that the spooky girl was receiving the numbers from some Swedish-looking alien dudes, who know all about the end of the world. In fact, they've come back to earth to save the professor's son and his girlfriend from global Armageddon. Nice.
Not only do the angelic aliens take the kids, but also two fluffy white bunny rabbits. (Seriously!) We eventually find that these two kids are apparently not the only ones being saved, since as the spaceship takes off, we see lots more Noah's Ark spaceships taking off from all over the planet. Presumably on those ships other kids are carrying pairs of elephants, giraffes and wildebeest.
Meanwhile, the whole planet is engulfed in flame. But not to worry because the blond aliens drop the two kids off on an idyllic looking planet. It's a regular Garden of Eden, in fact, complete with its own Tree of Knowledge -- presumably an ever so biting and cynical suggestion that we humans will again fall from grace in this new world. With no groundwork established in the film to suggest that we ever did fall from grace in the first place, this "meaningful" bit at the end comes across as utter pretentiousness.
"Knowing" is essentially an extremely boring and silly film. The premise could have been developed intelligently. And things do go quite well until about the time that the second disaster foretold by the numbers comes to pass. But after this, the film soon grinds to a tedious halt, crushed under the unbearable weight of its own ridiculous self-importance, laughable script and preposterously overblown score.