Running Time: 1hr 38min
Rating: 2/5 stars
Malevolent aliens make their mark on quiet American streets in “Dark Skies”, the new horror/thriller by writer and director Scott Stewart. But these dark skies are like storm clouds that pass over, leaving the ground bone dry.
The Barrett family has found itself in a most unwelcome situation: they’ve been chosen. By whom, you ask? The Grays – a stealthily hostile group of aliens. There is no prize for this election, only a certainty of hellish outcomes for the Barretts. It all starts when strange things begin happening around the house. Lacy Barrett (Keri Russell) awakes early one morning to find food from the pantry arranged in geometric patterns. Pictures go missing from their frames. The burglar alarm goes off in the dead of night without apparent cause. Flocks of starlings smash into the Barrett home, their migrations drawn off course by some bizarre attraction. Lacy and her husband, Daniel (Josh Hamilton), suffer black outs – periods of time with no memory attached. Sam Barrett (Kadan Rockett), the youngest son, begins acting oddly, claiming to have conversations with someone he calls the Sandman.
Pictures he draws indicate a tall, thin, shadowy figure holding his hand.
Seeking answers only leads to greater mystery. Trying to make sense of the string of inexplicable and disturbing events, Lacy and Daniel seek out an expert in alien matters, played by J.K. Simmons. He’s the one who informs the Barretts that they, like many others before them, have been chosen. He encourages them to make a stand against the other worldly oppressors, but not to hold out much hope of victory. Ultimately, he assures them, the home invasions will continue, growing more unpleasant, until they culminate in an abduction event – usually the first family member to have made contact with the aliens. Naturally, Lacy and Daniel turn their protective intentions to little Sam, who, more than his older brother, Jesse (Dakota Goyo), seems to have been most affected by the Grays.
There is a twist which occurs literally in the last few seconds of the film which served to confuse me for several minutes. It was only by the time I had reached my car in the parking garage, that I made sense of it. To state the obvious, a plot twist is only really effective if it makes an immediate and powerful impact. Contrarily, if a twist causes an audience to screw up their faces questioningly, and then say, “oh” with deflation, chances are it didn’t work.
Some things do work in “Dark Skies” precisely because it follows the successful tried and true formula of previous horror/thrillers, which, when still novel, was effective. But a lack of re-invention renders the film squarely in the middle of its numerous contemporaries. Moreover, “Dark Skies” suffers some pacing problems, favoring dialogue and dead-end subplots over frights.
There’s always a hope when a new horror flick hits the theaters. Will this be the one that sets the new 21st century standard? Will this one reinvent the genre? Will this be the one that makes us wish we had gone ahead and worn that pair of adult diapers into the darkened theater? It’s why we visit haunted house after haunted house on the
big screen, endure monster after ghost after alien, and witness the throngs of possessed children and all the clichéd devices that accompany these stories. We’re waiting for the high of the thrill. But the truth is, maybe we’ve lived it all. We can’t go back and become the audience that fainted during “Dracula” in 1931. We’ve seen too much, but surely not everything. And so we keep going back whenever the skies grow dark.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2387433/combined
