Chill-iducing doomsday thriller; Cage is affective and the f/x are hair-raisingly good

Rating: 8/10 (11 May 2009)

KNOWING (2009) *R** Nicolas Cage, Chandler Canterbury, Rose Byrne, Lara Robinson, Ben Mendelsohn, D.G. Maloney, Nadia Townsend, Alan Hopgood, Lesley Anne Mitchell, Adrienne Pickering. Chill-inducing doomsday thriller with Cage (surprisingly low-key for the most part and quite affective too boot) as a professor who discovers the end days may be nigh when his son's school unearths a time capsule and the envelope he's been given contains a mysterious list of numbers that prove prophetic in disasters over the years. Well-directed by helmsman Alex Proyas with the right touch of humanity and special effects (the latter featuring some hairy accidents involving a plane crash and a runaway subway train will have you on the edge of your seat) thanks largely to the well-developed script by Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden & Stile White that has an intriguing biblical climax.