Review of Dark Skies (2013) by Panta O — 15 Jan 2014

I wasn't sure about this science fiction thriller written and directed by Scott Stewart - mixed reviews were everywhere, and I made a decision to watch it. The story of the Barrett family : father Daniel (Josh Hamilton), mother Lacy (Keri Russell), oldest son Jesse (Dakota Goyo), and youngest son Sammy (Kadan Rockett) started building up quite nicely. Daniel has been out of work for at least three months, which has put a lot of strain on their marriage, and at night Jesse and Sammy communicate with each other - Jesse is reading scary stories about the Sandman, which frightens Sammy, but it distracts him from their parents' fighting. Suddenly, very strange things started happening to the family, including partially eaten food all over the kitchen floor, canned and packaged foods stacked up in towers all over the kitchen projecting a strange sign on the ceiling, picture frames empty, alarm system going off for no reason... and Sammy says that the Sandman did it before he came to his room. Everything went nice and smooth during that building of the story! I was involved in the storytelling and enjoyed the characters. Nothing more, though, after that.

It managed to build up some reasonable level of spookiness, and the suspense was just enough for decent entertainment. The ending and the last part were pure disappointment and after seeing it I could not understand the purpose of making the movie in the first place: was it to inform me, change my perception on the given subject or entertain me!? Didn't do any of those things fully and to the satisfactory level! I still decided to give it a positive review... just... because I could not put it in the category of bad movies.