Indy's Summer Movie Marathon Continues . . . KNOWING and UNBORN UNRATED (2009)

[indianasmith]

I watched both of these the other night and really enjoyed each of them. 

SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!!

KNOWING is an honest-to-gosh end of the world movie.  No launching a nuke at an asteroid at the last minute, or anything else, this is bend over, humanity, and kiss your butt goodbye!  I really enjoyed this flim.  The plot was fast-moving, the scares worked, and Nick Cage, as always, was brilliant.  The plane crash right next to the freeway impressed me as much as any scene I've watched in a long time.  And the sinister "whisper people" definitely made the film worth watching.  If you don't mind a bit of a downer ending  (Well, personally, I consider global annhilation a little depressing), this movie is definitely worth renting.
The plotline?  In 1949, an elementary school marked the dedication of a new building by burying a time capsule full of the children's pictures of what the future would look like.  But one of them buried a page covered with columns of  numbers.  Fifty years later, when the capsule is opened, the envelopes are given out to modern students - and one of them is the son of astrophysicist Johnn Koestler, played by Cage.  By pure chance, he notices one set of numbers - 9/11/01 2996 - that is, the date and casualty figures of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.  He correlates all the other numbers with other famous tragedies, including three that haven't happened yet . . . and then things start to get weird.

UNBORN (UNRATED) was a bizarre, strongly Jewish horror film about a disembodied spirit seeking access to our world through a teenage girl, whose twin brother had died in utero years ago.  This movie features dogs with upside down heads, creepy little kids that stab people, and poltergeist like disturbances.  I rather enjoyed it, some of the scenes were genuinely creepy.  Gary Oldham falls a bit short as a Jewis rabbi, and of course the Christian priest was not only helpless before the evil entity, but acually got possessed by it, but still, it was better than most of the recent horror films I've watched.

My weeklong movie extravaganza is drawing to a close, but I have one more trip to Hasting's planned this evening, so watch for another post this weekend!

[dean]

I quite enjoyed the Knowing if not for the fact that I love Alex Proya's work, particularly Dark City, and I am a sucker for religious sci fi, and the school in the film is MY high school [they filmed it about 2kms from here where I went to high school].  It's fun whenenver the school scenes came on and you shout 'hurrah!'.  Ah bliss.

The disaster scenes were great and whilst I thought the ending was a bit lacking, the 'angel' characters were great: that one scene with the guy sending that blinding light to Cage's face was freaky and terrific!

Anyways, it's by no means perfect but I will very much be adding it to my collection.

[trekgeezer]

Just watched Knowing on pay per view.   The numbers had us going there, what would you do if you knew where and when some horrible disaster is going to happen, but you don't know what it's going to be.  Kinda hard to get anyone to believe you.



I liked the way the ending was sort of ambiguous as to what or who was taking the kids.

[3mnkids]

I didnt like the knowing at all.  Does it want to be an action movie, a drama, a religious movie....It just felt all over the place and the ending was lame IMO.  sorry.      

I havent watched the unborn. It has a lot of contorting going on in it doesnt it? Besides the dog I thought I saw other things in the previews. I cant watch anything that contorts its body, it freaks me out.      Now im thinking about in the mouth of madness..ewww.