The Barrett family (Josh Hamilton, Keri Russell, Dakota Goyo
and Kadan Rockett) begin to experience strange happenings around their home
that lead them to believe that they are being visited by malevolent extraterrestrials
for some unknown purpose.
Dark Skies recipe:
A generous helping of Insidious
A box of Fire in the
Sky
A cup of Paranormal
Activity
A dash of Poltergeist
Mix in a blender and apply randomly to script.
The result is a very unoriginal film that barely manages to
provide any scares. Even the title is taken from a television show from the 90s that involved alien abductions. Entire scenes are stolen from better flicks and the
filmmakers aren’t even subtle in how they blatantly plagiarize them. There’s a
scene where Lacy, played by Keri Russell, investigates a noise in the kitchen
late at night and finds that all her appliances and dinnerware have been
arranged in an impromptu work of art on her dining room table, just like the
chairs in Poltergeist. Dialogue is
taken right from that scene and repeated verbatim as well, just with “The TV
People” swapped out with “Mr. Sandman”. It’s quite pathetic.
Writer/Director Scott Stewart has never been one for
originality or even making a decent movie for that matter. Ever seen Legion or Priest? Yup, that was this dude. Each flick borrowed ideas and/or
scenes from better movies and were barely watchable (I am told the Defiance pilot he directed for the SyFy Channel
was quite horrific as well). While he does manage to wring some decent
performances out of his actors from time to time as well as manage to capture a
spooky looking shot now and then, the whole project just feels dated and stale
from the outset. There’s nothing of note to say about it other than it was a
movie that I didn’t switch off. He didn’t make a bad movie. In fact I’d say
that it’s probably the best overall feature he’s made so far in his career. The
problem is that he doesn’t seem to strive for anything other than mediocrity.
At least there wasn’t a character named “Jeep” this time around.
Keri Russell gives a great performance, clearly trying to
take her film career to the next level. I bought into her situation due to her
realistic reactions to events and believed that she honestly felt that aliens
were the cause of her family’s woes. Why she doesn’t appear in more movies is beyond
me. Josh Hamilton doesn’t fare so well and looks like he’s bored. I’ve never
thought much of him as an actor (he was the weakest link in Alive as far as I was concerned) and he
does nothing to change my mind here. Sure there are some moments when he
manages to pull a rabbit out of his hat and make me believe he’s playing a part
and not himself, but they are few and far between. The child actors that play
his kids are more convincing by a long shot. J.K. Simmons makes a brief
appearance as an alien expert/abductee, but the script does him no favors since
he is given dialogue straight from episodes of The X-Files and zero personality.
I will admit that there was one event in this movie that
surprised me – the ending. While I will not go into spoiler territory I will
say that I did not expect the ending to be as ballsy as it was since the rest
of the flick plays it so damned safe.
I didn’t hate Dark
Skies even though I did nothing but complain about it in this review. I was
just completely underwhelmed by it. I have seen it all before in better movies
and the lack of creativity and originality really irked me. The sad thing is
that this movie could have been cool with a different writer/director combo. It
might have been a good idea for Stewart to hand his script over to someone else
for a rewrite or two. There are some cool moments that are mildly scary and
Keri Russell is her usual awesome self. Despite these minor pros, Stewart hasn’t
made a film yet that I can legitimately say I enjoyed. Buck up dude or you’re
going to the hell of straight-to-SyFy schlock.
1.5 out of 5
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