Question: What do you get when you cross “The Dead Zone” with “Deep Impact,” “Signs,” “Independence Day” and “The Holy Bible”?

Answer: “Knowing”

Hey, just because most traditional allegories don’t use space aliens and psychic predictions doesn’t mean Hollywood is above giving it a try.

Nicolas Cage stars as an M.I.T. professor who has lost his faith in just about everything after his wife was killed in an accident. He’s raising their son and barely making it (psychologically) day to day.

When his son brings home a cryptic series of numbers found in a time capsule from 1959 that his school unearthed, the professor puts his big ol’ brain in action and discovers that the numbers represent accurate predictions of the dates, death tolls and locations of major tragedies that happened after 1959. His biggest concern is that there are 3 more dates left.

Determined to prevent the inevitable, Cage’s character does all he can to stop the disasters. Yet, there’s little he can do to stop the apocalyptic solar flare his own scientific models have predicted.

“Knowing” starts on a gripping premise, and socks you with tons of great special effects. There’s a scene with a crashing jetliner and another with a runaway subway train that are intense and extremely lifelike. When the solar flare hits Earth, you get a great update on the destruction stylings of the movie “Independence Day.” Even the aliens that eventually arrive on earth to save some kids are pretty cool, if not somewhat reminiscent of the Crystal Skull aliens of last summer’s Indiana Jones. If you are a special effects junkie, you won’t be disappointed! And you’ll be in heaven if you get the Blu-ray version.

If you insist on a logic-driven story, you might be left scratching your head during one scene near the end. Aliens offer to rescue a select group of children from earth. The professor reluctantly lets his boy and an orphaned girl go with the aliens–who also happen to look a little like angels with wispy plasma wings. This would be okay if they left it at that, but there’s a follow up scene where the children are safely deposited on a new earthlike planet/Garden of Eden. The aliens fly away, leaving the kids to fend for themselves. WHO LEAVES A FEW HUNDRED 10-YEAR-OLDS SCATTERED OVER AN ALIEN PLANET?! I’m sorry, but even if they don’t deconstruct themselves into a “Lord of the Flies” scenario, 10-year-olds know bupkiss about agriculture, hunting, constructing shelter (or better yet constructing the basic tools needed to build basic shelter). As I have very little faith in  10-year-olds ruling an empty new planet loaded with only partially familiar flora and fauna, I’m left thinking that perhaps their quick solar-flare death on earth would be far preferable to an agonizingly slow death of starvation and exposure on a new planet.

But that’s just me. I get hung up on those details. Aside from that, the rest of the movie is pretty cool. Great special effects and a really interesting premise. Who could ask for more? Oh, yeah, I guess that would be…uh…what I was just doing.