Day 4 of Halloween: Dark Skies

Jason: As the first of two alien films on this list, Dark Skies follows the classic abduction story line and goes for a lurking terror plot. It’s pretty formulaic. And as Emily and I were watching it, we kept looking at each other with incredulity. This family, who is supposedly going through pretty bad financial struggles, lives in a huge, multi-level house, have at least one nice car, hold dinner parties in their backyard, and can afford a six camera, night vision, wireless security camera system. But they want to cut back on the cable. It’s like the writers don’t know what it means to be in a financial crisis. And the chemistry between the actors is not the best. Kerri Russel does a pretty good job playing a freaked out mom but she and the husband have a weird tension between them. I dunno. That isn’t to say that this movies doesn’t have some redeeming qualities, though. The alien design is spooky and they never get to the point where they are shown too much. They get to keep their creepy vagueness and maintain that sense of the unknown. There is one other significant difference between this movie and classic alien abductions stories that I didn’t pick up on until I watched this one a second time. JK Simmons explains that the “invasion has already happened. They’re already here.” This seems to be implying that the aliens aren’t actually coming from space but are already here on Earth and are operating terrestrially. I liked the addition of this little detail because it makes it feel that much more invasive and horrific that they are doing this to humans. They have already assimilated themselves into our ecosystem and are now just another creature living here that we have to deal with. And there’s nothing we can do about it.

Joel: Let me tell you a little something about Blumhouse Productions, the company that made this movie. The entire idea behind the company is that instead of spending a bunch of money to make a mega blockbuster of a movie, you spend as little as possible on a whole slate of movies with the idea that maybe one or two will strike it big. Dark Skies is one of five different movies that Blumhouse released in 2013. In 2014 it released 14 titles with another 13 being released in 2015. All of those movies cost $10 Million or less, and in a world of $250 million dollar movie budgets, $10 million is very cheap. I bring all of that up to point out that Dark Skies is a movie that takes no risks, tries nothing new with the tropes of the genre, and pretty much exists to make back a tiny bit more that the little bit that cost to make it. This doesn’t necessarily make it a terrible movie, but it does make it a very “paint by numbers” movie. The kid draws pictures of the aliens, there are mysterious signs, the home security system shuts out an a convenient time, there’s a wise old man who has experienced all of this before. Really, it is what it is. Nothing is offensively wrong about it, but it is incredibly forgettable.

Chris: And yet another movie that would’ve been solved if the main couple just didn’t have kids. Seriously, does every horror movie need some sort of annoying child actor to be the host of some demonic spirit or, in this case, alien plant that likes screwing with people. I love Kerri Russell but the acting across the board was laughable and the kids involved were just awful. I will say this, Russell’s blank stare and banging her head into the sliding glass door was probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in awhile. It’s like it deserves to be in a out-of-context montage with every other scene in Nic Cage’s Wickerman. 0-3-1.