Product Research: Knowing(2009)

Knowing is a 2009 American-British Sci-Fi Thriller film directed by Alex Proyas and starring Nicolas Cage.

In 1959, student Lucinda Embry hears whispers as she stares at the sun. Later, she writes a page of seemingly random numbers and adds it to her school's time capsule, set to be opened in 50 years.
In 2009, Caleb Koestler is a student at the same school. When the time capsule is opened, Caleb is supposed to read and write about some of the capsule's contents. He's given the page of numbers written by Lucinda. His widowed father Jonathan played by Nicolas Cage, a professor of astrophysics at MIT, notices the numbers have a specific set of sequences referring to the times and locations of fatal disasters over the last 50 years.

I found the opening really enjoyable as it sets an unnerving aspect throughout the clip. We first see this by the murmur at a fast pace joined by the titles changing from numbers to texts in an unnatural way.

We first see a close up of a young girls face. However her face looks a little bruised and she is looking up at something. It appears that it is only the little girl who can hear the voices which implies that there is something sinister happening. Then Lucinda ignores her teacher and countinues looking at the sky the rapid whispering stops and changes to music with a more haunted atmosphere.

The camera moves from the playground to an ordinary classroom. The teacher assigns them a task and the kids start drawing. This is when the camera tracks the teachers movements and suspicious music increases slowly. When the teacher gets to Lucinda and see'a that she was writing down numbers the music stops and changes to a more static and unnatural sound. This is made more abnormal by the whispers. 

Overall I really like Knowing as it includes key elemenets of the generic conventions of a thrill such as a protagonist and a sense of mystery.