It is no coincidence or quirk of fate that you are reading this review at this precise time.

There are no accidents or chance occurrences – everything is preordained, mapped out years if not decades in advance and we are just passengers on this invisible roller-coaster through space and time.

However, there are people among us with the ability to predict the seemingly random events; extraordinary men, women and children with one thing in common: they all hear voices in their heads.

Mankind’s salvation lies not in the hands of governments, environmentalists or the scientific community, but in the ravings of the mentally disturbed, who are tuned into a frequency that most of us can never hear.

So claims Knowing, an apocalyptic thriller from director Alex Proyas (I, Robot), which tasks one fractured family with the impossible task of unravelling the secrets of this rapidly dying universe.

Fifty years after a group of elementary school children bury their drawings of the future in a time capsule, a new generation of curious tykes opens the container.

Inside, young Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury) discovers a sheet of paper written by a little girl, Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson), which at first glances seems to be lines of random numbers.

When Caleb’s widower father, astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage), examines the sequence he identifies the exact dates and death tolls of every major catastrophe to befall mankind.

More worrying, there are three more sets of numbers on the page.

Scientist pal Phil Beckman (Ben Mendelsohn) tries to dissuade John from paying any attention to numerology: ‘People see what they want to see.’ However, a plane crash validates the prediction and John races against time to unlock the secret of the final numbers, aided by Lucinda Embry’s daughter Diana (Rose Byrne) and granddaughter Abby (Robinson again).

Knowing surrenders its loose grasp on reality as father and son become embroiled in a series of spectacular, jaw-dropping, action set pieces and somehow keep a straight face as the plot twists and turns to its outlandish resolution.

There’s no doubting Proyas’s ability to orchestrate mayhem on a grand scale: the plane crash is truly horrifying as passengers burn before our eyes and subsequent catastrophes meld live action and computer generated effects to dizzying effect.

However, the script doesn’t pack a similar punch and most of the characters remain blank canvases until the final frame.

Cage hardly breaks a sweat in the gloomy lead role – ‘The numbers are warnings…

for me!’ – while Canterbury doesn’t possess the acting chops in the film’s pivotal scene of emotional outpouring.

Apparently, reading this review will have no effect on your decision to see Knowing or stay away.

That choice is predetermined; so too is your ambivalence when you leave the cinema.

• Release Date: Wednesday 25 March 2009
• Certificate: 15
• Runtime: 121mins