Movie Info
Movie Name: Dark Skies
Studio: Entertainment One
Genre(s): Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Release Date(s): February 22, 2013
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Nope…I don’t see any similarity
Daniel and Lacy Barrett (Josh Hamilton and Keri Russell) have hit a rough patch. Daniel is out of work, and Lacy is struggling with the sluggish housing market. When their son Sammy (Kadan Rockett) begins telling stories of the Sandman, Daniel and Lacy learn that it might not just be his imagination. Birds begin to fly into their home, and the family all finds them suffering from lost time. Now, Daniel, Lacy, Sammy, and their other son Jesse (Dakota Goyo) might be fighting a losing battle against unstoppable forces, and their family might be at stake.
Ok that’s a little creepy…
Directed by Scott Stewart, Dark Skies is a horror-science-fiction film which focuses on alien abductions. The movie was released to largely negative reviews, but was profitable.
I like alien abduction stories. Movies like Fire in the Sky and shows like The X-Files play with the fear of the unknown, and Dark Skies tries to tap into this fear…unfortunately, the attempts to create atmosphere in this film lead to the film falling flat.
I haven’t had a week like this since that time I cut my hair in college!!!
Dark Skies needed to be rated R. It needed to be edgier and tougher, but instead it tried to build suspense. Suspense works, but only if the resolution and the final scares are payoff to the suspense. The movie does a nice job at the start with classic horror like movies (like Russell walking in and seeing the alien for a second). The movie then dips into Signs (by outright ripping off the dinner table scene in that film), and has a very non-shocking ending that the filmmakers I think viewers weren’t smart enough to figure out. The horror isn’t there and it isn’t much of a sci-fi movie.
The cast is fine. Keri Russell is nice as the mom pushed to her wits (I do like the glass breaking scene) and Josh Hamilton isn’t quite developed enough. The two children also do a fair job, but the movie’s script doesn’t help them. I generally like J. K. Simmons, but he really didn’t do much in this film except provide exposition on alien abduction (that I felt was pretty basic and common knowledge).
Aliens…take me away!
The movie has some moments visually, but ends up really failing. If they didn’t really want to show the aliens, that is fine…the scene when Russell went into the room and sees one hovering over Sammy works as an example, but by the end of the movie, the viewer wants (and deserves) more payoff. The movie’s attempt to steal from Signs should have included stealing some of their visual clews which made the movie good.
Dark Skies is pretty bad…which is unfortunate because it started out relatively strong. The movie turns into a bore and something that is not tolerable is a boring horror film. The one benefit of horror is that bad horror turns into funny…Dark Skies doesn’t fall into either of those categories.
