Nicolas Cage and child live in a creepy farm house. His sister is a Christian who is trying to have him reconcile with his preacher father.
He finds mysterious manuscript written by a madwoman and begins having premonitions of fiery disasters — which then subsequently occur. At about the same time,the kids are hounded by strange people who keep handing them shiny black river rocks.
His last premonition is of global conflagration due to a large solar flare. It is confirmed to be coming scientifically. He reconciles with his father. The kids are taken by a space ship. He is left behind and — along with the rest of the world — is burned by the sun.
Kids are dropped off on another planet.
The end.
The engineer in me wants to know how much time there would be between noticing such a flare heading Earth’s way and its actual strike. And how a space ship could be scrambled on such short notice.
Was the space ship a government secret?
Major downer. A very bleak movie. It left me feeling like I did when I went to the planetarium as a kid and heard that the sun would eventually die out and leave earth lifeless. But I guess they really wanted all those scenes of mass destruction and couldn’t think of any way Nick Cage would survive the cataclysm.