The last time Nic Cage was able to predict the future, it was in last year’s utterly daft but quite enjoyable thriller, Next.
Well, he’s at it again in his new film, Knowing, but judging from the trailer, which went live today at IGN, this is a very different kettle of fish.
Directed by Alex Proyas, who knows his way around dark sci-fi (he directed The Crow, Dark City and I, Robot, which had some interesting ideas at least), Knowing sees Cage play the father of a young boy who takes home a piece of paper dug up from a time capsule that’s been buried for 50 years.
Seemingly just a jumble of nonsensical numbers, Cage realises that the paper is actually a code which – and he must have spent all night Googling to find this out – reveals the dates, and death tolls, of every single major disaster around the world since the time capsule was buried.
No prizes for guessing that there are still some atrocities to come, and that Cage tries to stop them, while somehow winding up in the middle of it all. But how do you stop something if you know when it’s coming, but not where?
In the wrong hands, of course, this could be utter guff, but the teaser seems to suggest that Cage (who’s had his fair share of clunkers of late) and Proyas are taking this one deadly seriously. It’s shot in austere, muted, blue tones, and there’s an event in the trailer that we’re not going to reveal here – go see for yourself – but it must have taken serious balls to put that on the big screen.
But the overall impression is that Proyas may have created a spooky film on quite a large canvas here – in fact, the premise and execution puts us a little in mind of the Richard Burton horror film, The Medusa Touch.
Still, don’t take our word for it. Go check out the trailer, which also showcases Rose Byrne, now. And if you’re in the mood for another dark movie in which a major cataclysm threatens to engulf the Earth, the trailer for The Day The Earth Stood Still also debuted today. Click here to read about that.