Horror movies always seem to work in 2-5 year trends in
popularity. No matter what form they come in, they always have an audience and
it’s been a persisting genre through the decades. However in order to survive,
horror has to shift and move around with the public’s current phobias. It would
seem that the bump-in-the-night, haunted house chiller is the prevailing trend
currently, with the recent success of films such as “Paranormal Activity”,
“Sinister”, “Mama”, and “Insidious”. Launched from the same wheel-house, we now
have “Dark Skies”, another slow building, scare teasing, spine-tingler. While
this film may look and feel suspiciously similar to those aforementioned movies,
this one tweaks with the sub-genre a little by changing the supernatural terror
from an ancient apparition into something more intergalactic.
Josh
Hamilton and Kerri Russell play Daniel and Lacey Barrett, two suburban parents
who are suffering from financial strains. Daniel is an out of work architect,
hoping a land a new job before the mortgage has to be paid, and Lacey is a
underselling real estate agent. Together they are raising two boys; a 13 year
old who is discovering girls and rebellion, and a 6 year old who has an
overactive imagination that keeps him up at night. While their lives are
already in disarray, they begin to have visitations by an eerie presence that
rearranges the items in their kitchen, brings flocks of kamikaze birds to their
house, and leaves incriminating marks and bruises on their children. Even
worse, all of the members of the family find themselves losing hours at a time
in strange mid-day blackouts. Together, Hamilton and Russell have to put their
marital and financial stresses on the back burners while they figure out what’s
going on and how to keep their children protected.
While
“Dark Skies” is certainly not a remarkable film I found that it to be perfectly
serviceable. It knows how to
thoughtfully build tension and it surprisingly rounds out the family dynamics
of the main characters, drawing the audience into the dread more effectively.
All of these bare-minimum positives are made all the more exceptional by the
fact that this movie was written and directed by Scott Stewart, the man
responsible for “Legion” and “Priest”; two of the most brain-numbing arguments
for why we should expect so little from mid-winter, theatrical releases. But even if “Dark Skies” barely peaks its
eyes over mediocre, if we are grading on a curve against Stewart’s other films,
this production shows massive growth, maturity, and surprising restraint.
Is
there anything here you haven’t seen before? I doubt it. The horror tropes are all familiar; including,
slowly inspecting the hallways with a flashlight to investigate a noise
[check], creepy kid making creepy drawings of his new “imaginary friends” [check],
items in the house being misplaced or broken in a loud or obtrusive manner
[check], capturing unsettling imagery and/or blurry figures in a cheap-looking
security camera recording [check]. The very idea of paralleling suburban family
problems with an outside supernatural force is, in itself, something of a
cliché, but even if it’s a song we have all heard a million times, this movie
sings it pretty well. It’s paced competently
and the screenplay isn’t overloaded or unwieldy. Also, by trading in
traditional ghosts for something more ubiquitous it cleverly solves that haunted-house
problem of “why don’t they just move”.
“Dark
Skies” is a completely inoffensive offering. I wouldn’t call it memorable and it probably
isn’t scary enough, but it’s tightly made and all its gears are moving like
they should. While, I can’t help but notice how this movie continually pales in
comparison to it’s obvious influences (“Poltergeist”, “The Amityville Horror”,
“Signs”, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” etc..) it doesn’t outstay it’s
welcome and it succeeds in inspiring the
nervous nibbling of your popcorn.
Grade: C+
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2013
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