What would you do if you had in your possession an encrypted list of all of the deadly calamities to have befallen the world since 50 years earlier? John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) finds himself in just this predicament. When Koestler's young son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), receives a sealed envelope containing a long sequence of numbers as his part in the opening of a time capsule at his school, his father, a science professor at MIT, is intrigued. As John pores over the numbers, he begins to unravel a pattern, starting with when he spotted 9/11/01 and the number of the dead from that tragedy. Soon, he has circled the dates of hundreds of just such events in the long list of numbers, along with the dead, but he still can't figure out what the remainder of the numbers means. He tries to enlist the help of a friend and fellow professor, but what he is saying sounds insane - that a document written by a very young girl placed into a time capsule 50 years prior could predict the future, even down to including the date of his wife's tragic death in a hotel fire.

When a plane crashes directly in front of him at the exact time and date the paper predicted, he realizes the remaining numbers are latitudes and longitudes and determines to discover the meaning of the last entry on the page. He then turns his search to the child who authored the document 50 years prior, Lucinda Embry, but soon finds out she passed away several years before. After speaking with Lucinda's teacher, he finds out the time capsule was Lucinda's idea, that she was very troubled that day, and that her writing of the list was cut short when they ran out of time. He locates Lucinda's daughter, Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne), who has a daughter named Abby (Lara Robinson), who is Caleb's age. At first, Diana wants nothing to do with John and his deluded ramblings. But since the date her mother always claimed Diana would die is one of the dates on the page, she soon listens to John.

Before long, both John and Caleb find themselves plagued with visions of strange blonde-haired men who seem to be following Caleb. Add to that the fact that both Abby and Caleb keep hearing strange whispers, and John and Diana start to really worry. When John determines that the final entry relates to a cataclysmic solar flare destined to destroy the world's population, it becomes a race to save those he loves and has come to love.

There were certain scenes in Knowing that were really cool, like the aforementioned plane crash and some of the visions Caleb had. But these scenes were not enough to keep the film from falling into the trap of slow pacing and confused direction. Although the future-predicting document was a really neat plot device, when they threw in the religious and alien sub-plots, the movie just got bogged down in itself. Honestly, when we finished watching it, I had determined that my entire review was going to simply consist of three letters. W.T.F. Just kidding, but the thought did cross my mind.

Knowing is worth watching, but just be aware going in that most of the movie is really slow and the end is a trip to crazy town. Special features are light and include two short featurettes and audio commentary. While the explosions and crash scenes look and sound great in high def, there's a good deal of obvious CG in the film (although it isn't at all cheesy). This one is a rental in my opinion, because I can't see wanting to see it more than once.