Dark Skies

Dark Skies entered my life when a bus drove past advertising the film.  Insidious was mentioned on the poster and this was enough to convince me that the film would be worth a look.

PLOT:  Deep in suburban America the Barrett family are randomly selected for experimentation by aliens.  The aliens use tried and tested horror clichés to district the family in order that they can steal one of the children.  Google can take you from “bird deaths” to “my son if being stalked by an alien” in three mouse clicks.  There is no plot twist.  END PLOT

The most unsettling thing about Dark Skies was the constant feeling of déjà vu that I couldn’t shake off during the entire 97mins (IMDB) running time.  Dark Skies doesn’t contain one single original idea and is the most paint by numbers film I have endured for a long time.

The traditional horror style scares and sci-fi don't mix well and the subplot involving the family’s financial woes and marital problems is overdone and almost grinds the film to a halt.

The characters are stereotypical with the worried mother (Kerri Russell), cynical father (Josh Hamilton), obnoxious teen (Dakota Goyo) and creepy young kid (Kadan Rockett) making up the Barrett family. 

The cast do the best they can but they are saddled with clunky dialogue which has been copied and pasted from the generic book of film scripts.

 

There are next to no scares and the vast majority of the action involves the parents running around in the dark looking for their young son.  They don’t think to turn on a light – this is the kind of stupidity we are forced to sit through.

 

Dark Skies is not a good film.  The mixture of horror and sci-fi didn’t work and played out like Signs meets Paranormal Activity meets the recession.  The open ending is screaming for a sequel that the film doesn’t deserve.  Dark Skies gets 3.5/10.  The only way you will enjoy Dark Skies is if you haven’t watched a film in the past ten years.