It would take a Brobdingnagian amount of talent to make scenes such as Keri Russell heartily banging her forehead on a glass door while wearing a face like she's the T-1000 after John Connor anything but laughable, let's not even talk about scary. And when the trailer hit us with the big shock of Josh Hamilton standing out in the yard with his mouth agape like he's a Big Mouth Billy Bass, it was clear that "Dark Skies" was made by people who have a very strange concept of what constitutes terror. And every single person in that theater did nothing but laugh and jeer at the trailer for it.
What we finally received was pretty much as silly as the trailer made it out to be, although it wasn't nearly as hilarious. Actually I think had that been the case it would have made for a far more entertaining film considering that the majority of "Dark Skies" is honestly kind of boring. This isn't something to be laughed at and lampooned like "The Happening" or some other ill-conceived train wreck. It's just kind of "there." It does what it does, and is not interested in anything other than existing, because the film industry needed a sci-fi horror flick to throw in theaters during the slow winter months. Enjoy.
So you thought that boarding up your windows would keep highly advanced, intergalactic traveling aliens out? This isn't "Signs."
The story is the very well-trodden alien abduction plot that you'd see in any random episode of "The X-Files," although in "The X-Files" the characters were seldom as dumb, annoying, or such terrible actors as they were in "Dark Skies." The film follows the Barrett family as they are being tormented by strange occurrences which are clearly not-of-this-realm-of-reality, but like most movies like this it takes them an absurd amount of time to come to the conclusion that this weird stuff isn't normal, and it isn't "because they're stressed" or some other contrived, tired cliche. And naturally, once they finally come to terms with the situation and decide to do something about it, they instantly do the exact opposite of what they were told to do by the one person who knew what was going on, and at the end of the movie they wind up losing one of their sons by alien abduction because they're all stupid. Good job. I'm glad they were my main characters.
Since there's barely anything worth talking about besides the ending, as the rest of the movie can be explained away as "Stupid stuff happens until they talk to someone about UFOs," I'll just talk about the end. Dan (Josh Hamilton) and Lacy (Keri Russell) are told by the alien abduction expert they see (J.K. Simmons in his only scene) that there's probably little they can do to prevent the abduction of their son. They believe it's the youngest son, Sam (Kadan Rockett) who is the target of the aliens. It turns out that it's the older son, Jesse (Dakota Goyo) who is the real target, which they release only after he gets abducted, even though based on the evidence the parents had in front of them, it should have been as obvious as a mace to the back of the skull.
But despite which child the aliens were after, it didn't matter because they would both be equally screwed when their protectors are Dan and Lacy. They were told to do one thing: Stick together. They simply had to do that ONE THING. A single task. But what do they do when the aliens show up? They immediately split the party. And they do it not once, but twice. They split a party of 4 people twice. For those keeping score, that leaves 2 family members completely alone. And as any self-respecting D&D player will tell you: You never split the party. Ever.
Damn it, Dan. You had one job. ONE JOB.
So of course their kid gets abducted. They're all idiots. And the kicker of it is that Dan and Lacy actually had the balls to be shocked by this development.
But that whole abduction thing is a rather odd endgame considering the process leading up to it. The aliens torment this family so much and in such weirdly pranksterish ways that I honestly have no clue as to the purpose behind any of it. If I was an alien, I can dig abducting someone, but why would I be rooting through people's garbage, stacking chairs in their kitchen, making birds fly into their house, and stealing all their pictures out of frames? None of that makes any sense as to what the aliens are actually attempting to do. Unless of course it's some kind of bizarre fourth-wall shattering creature with the power to know that it's in a horror movie, so they need to make weird, creepy stuff like that happen. Just abduct the damn kid and call it a day. Why all the shenanigans?
"Some photo-dude is gonna see all the photos gone, and it's gonna blow his mind!"
And this is just me, but I can't stand it when stuff like that goes down. Since I know that it's an alien abduction movie there's no mystery in it for me, so I don't have the luxury of ignorance that the characters do. So when I see what I know to be aliens pulling stupid pranks I am forced to ask myself what the purpose of all of it is. "Dark Skies" never gives us an answer. They just do it because.
The cast is nearly all terrible. Josh Hamilton and Keri Russell's characters would be grating to begin with, but they're played so low-key and clueless that it's nearly impossible to even root for them to be okay, and the chemistry between them and their on-screen children is equal to mold on bread. Although they aren't the worst here. The award for "Worst Child Actor since Jake Lloyd in 'The Phantom Menance'" has to be given to Kadan Rockett. I'm actually throwing out the possibility that Rockett might actually be worse. I'm not joking because this kid is atrociously bad. I never thought I'd see an actor of any age group read every line like he was both asleep and brain damaged at the same time. But I have now.
The only exceptions to the bad acting are J.K. Simmons, L.J. Benet and Dakota Goyo. Simmons is fine in his one scene despite not having much to work with. L.J. Benet plays Jesse's stoner friend Ratner, who is admittedly really obnoxious in his dumbass 15-year old wanksterness. But he's probably the most believable actor in the whole damn movie.
Dakota Goyo I find to be a pretty solid young actor, having been quite good in "Real Steel." And he's good in "Dark Skies," too. At the very least he's way ahead of the rest of the actors portraying his family. And that's despite being the centerpiece of a horrendously awkward scene of attempted heavy-petting, which basically implies that young girls totally like being fed terrible pick up lines from a porno and then being felt-up in an aggressive, potentially rapey way, as long as the act is performed knowledgeably and with confidence. So take a note, boys: Grab those teenage boobs with gusto! The ladies love it, and if you do it they'll even offer to show you how to kiss better!
Trust me, despite all that he's still light years ahead of pretty much everyone else.
The one positive thing I can say about "Dark Skies" is that whenever the aliens are actually on screen, which isn't often, it's actually pretty well done. There's one or two really good scares, and one moment that I found to be genuinely scary, when Keri Russell is being followed down the hallway by an alien that she doesn't know is behind her, and it's just checking her out. That was good. But I spent an hour and a half getting there, and it wasn't worth it.
And the ending is crap, too.
Want a laugh? Here you go! I've seen comedies less funny than this trailer.
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Dark Skies" is one of the few movies I can say would have benefited from actually being worse. The fact that it's not as outwardly hilarious as the trailer would have us believe makes it boring. It's a by the numbers alien abduction feature that makes less sense than usual and, apart from about 5 total minutes of decent scenes, leaves you asking what the point of the whole damn mess is.
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