95. Knowing

Title: Knowing
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Year: 2009

Summary: In 1959, Lucinda Embry stands in her school's playground staring at the sun, hearing whispers. The school makes a time capsule to be opened fifty years later. Lucinda writes a page of seemingly random numbers. She is later found in a closet, scratching numbers into the door.

Fifty years later, the time capsule is opened. Caleb Koestler, son of Jonathan Koestler, a widower and professor of astrophysics at MIT, receives Lucinda's page of numbers. He sees a mysterious stranger in the nearby trees and hears whispers. Jonathan sees the numbers, notices the sequence 911012996 and realizes it is a reference to the date and number of deaths from the September 11th attacks (9/11/01/2996). Jonathan finds similar information based on other numbers on Caleb's sheet. The last three dates on the page are in the near future. There are numbers between the dates that he cannot reconcile.

While researching, Jonathan learns that Lucinda died from a drug overdose, and Caleb receives more visits from mysterious strangers who give him a small smooth stone, and show him visions of the world on fire. On his way to pick up Caleb from school, Jonathan witnesses a major airplane crash. It is the date that the numbers predicted for the next disaster; the unexplained numbers are the locations of the events.

Jonathan then goes after Lucinda's daughter, Diana, and her daughter Abby, but scares them away when he reveals his interest in Lucinda's predictions. Jonathan pinpoints the next disaster to Worth Street in lower Manhattan. With news of terror-threats, Jonathan suspects the next cataclysm will be a terror attack. He pursues a man into a subway station suspecting him to be a terrorist, but he is only a shoplifter. At that same moment an approaching train derails, smashing into the station and destroying much of Jonathan's train.

Shocked to see the train fit the predictions, Diana decides to help Jonathan. She says that her mother used to hear voices, and that the next date, October 19, is the day said she would die. The two search Lucinda's mobile home in the woods, where they find pictures of the disasters she predicted, a copy of Matthäus Merian's engraving of Ezekiel's "chariot vision", and a pile of small smooth stones near Lucinda's bed. As Diana thinks the last number is not "33" but "EE" written backwards, John flips the bed over to find the underside covered with the words, "Everyone Else", representing a cataclysm that no one will escape. Outside, the Strangers appear around the car carrying the children. John drives them away only to hear from Abby that the "whisper people" want her and Caleb to go with them.

The next day, Abby colors the "Likeness of a Man" in the engraving and says it is the sun. John has a sudden revelation and rushes them to the MIT observatory, where he discovers that a massive solar flare will soon reach Earth, incinerating the ozone layer.

Diana wants to hide in some caves - and despite knowing it would not save them, John agrees. After seeing Caleb writing numbers, John decides to return to Lucinda's school and uncover the numbers on the old door. But before he manages to find them - which he thinks are coordinates of a safe place, at Lucinda's mobile home - Diana takes the children and heads for the caves. When Diana stops for gas, the Strangers drive off with Caleb and Abby. Diana pursues them but is broadsided by a truck.

John arrives just as Diana dies, finding the small stone in Diana's hand. He continues to Lucinda's mobile home, finding the children and the Strangers in a dry river bed covered with the stones. A vessel similar to the wheels in the engraving descends from the sky. As John is refused entry because "only the chosen must go", he decides to let his son leave, as the Strangers dissolve into translucent figures resembling aliens. The vessel departs with the children and a pair of rabbits, and a distant shot shows many similar vessels leaving earth. John collapses in grief, waking the next morning to find the sky full of smoke and heat. John makes it to Boston, finding the streets full of rioters. He arrives at his father's home to spend his last moments with his family. They embrace as the solar flare burns away the atmosphere and incinerates the Earth.

The film ends as Caleb and Abby in white linen clothing arrive at an otherworldly valley, then run across a field of golden grass towards a large tree.