Review of Dark Skies (2013) by Joshua B — 28 Apr 2014

What happens when a good premise gets coupled with a good cast? Success, right? If only. Dark Skies suffers from the usual trappings of the horror genre, while promising bigger and better, thought provoking things.

Don't get me wrong, the idea is solid, and there are some pretty nerve-wracking scenes, but this film is just dull and dumb in all the wrong places. The film gives a twist to the horror possession genre by showing a family being under the watch and being terrorized by aliens.

The film starts off with a real thought provoking and ultimately terrifying quote that promises one doozy of a frightening film. But it never delivers. We get the usual horror-centric tropes, but none of them are delivered with anything new.

Where this film does succeed is the cast. Keri Russell does great as the mom, but there are times when she's given nothing more to do than be the typical Hollywood horror movie mom. J.K. Simmons does well enough in a cameo sized role, but he looks bored most of the time, which is a mirror image of the audience.

Now, all the negativity aside, there are moments of true terror in the most simplistic way. Scenes outside at night with very little light, no music, very quiet. But none of it is ruined with cheap jump scares.

The direction is slow and methodical, keeping the characters very close to the camera to add a sense that we know just as little as they do. But those rare moments are very, very few and far between. Overall, it's very disappointing and sad that Dark Skies didn't aspire to do more with it's semi-original concept of alien possession to study and terrorize humans.

Hopefully this idea will be revisted again ajd given the proper treatment.