Dark Skies: Cinematic Version of a Sociopath

All of the food has been pulled from the fridge, household items have been stolen or arranged in odd fashions, and there are weird sounds in the night. At some point, one of these haunted house movies is going to reveal that the twist is that the family has accidentally moved into a frat house. Dark Skies would have been vastly improved by said revelation. As the latest cookie-cut horror flick from Blumhouse (who has produced much better genre fare like Insidious) Dark Skies is so devoid of original thought that its name has even been used previously on a half-dozen movies and TV series—and despite being about extraterrestrial invaders, there's not one shot of the titular sky. Director Scott Stewart moves away from his Catholic filmography (Legion, Priest) into something so bland it should be called Vanilla Skies. Wait. Nevermind.

The film centers on a family at the brink of collapses both financial and interpersonal, with a teenage son just discovering girls and a younger boy just discovering the outside world. Odd occurrences around their home as well as various medical emergencies are cause for concern; until a mass bird death on their property convinces them the coincidences are too plentiful. The mysterious event sends them on a search for both explanation and protection from the forces at work. With neighbors suspicious of their behavior and child protective services on the verge of tearing their sons away, an alien specialist (J.K. Simmons) convinces them an abduction is at hand and the only hope for their children may be from putting up one hell of a fight against vastly superior life forms from galaxies away. They get a dog and a shotgun and everything works out fine.

Or does it? Wait, you don't give a shit either? Fabulous.

Dark Skies is a movie. It has structure and a script and jump scares and sub-plots. But it's a sociopath, mirroring the actions of others and trying desperately to fit in, never taking notice of the larger issues of logic or why an audience would care to observe. The acting is fine and Stewart knows what tension would look or sound like, but can't seem to align the two in a way that might connect. As the parents explore the house at night, every night, the same pattern of checking from bedroom to bedroom to kitchen becomes so monotonous that fear migrates to any scene that isn't structured for a scare. But the film feels aware of this too, especially in a later scene where a text message is checked while the soundtrack lets loose with the kind of explosions usually reserved for the appearance of an invader. Nothing scary is happening, nor is this activity even related to the major events, but the movie suddenly seemed less interested in horror than in character development.

It should have followed those instincts. Great horror films manage to marry two distinct fears, or more accurately, sense the similar theme in both and fuel one via the other; think body-snatching and Communism or baby-making and sin. Dark Skies wants to connect aliens and divorce, even though the dissolve of the nuclear family usually comes from knowing too much about each other or discovering something on the inside that is monstrous, not from "the unknown." When J.K. Simmons is being sagely, he advises the family that their only chance is to stick together, despite the fact the family has never been spread apart. The film wants to pretend this call-to-arms in some manner unites this household against a common foe, even though the family has been, albeit troubled, exceptionally close-knit from the opening frames. As it exists, the film would have worked better in reverse, with parents trying too hard to overcompensate resulting in the division of family, allowing for something external to sneak in.

But even then you need an element of horror, and none exists here. The alien's motivation is described by Simmons as being based in manifesting all of our worst nightmares, but aside from one nonsensical sequence near the end, this is almost never the case. They seem wholly content with frat boy mischief, and even their most nefarious/painful activities are never remembered, or noticed, by the victims of their attacks. Both children wind up branded with strange marks over most of their bodies, but it isn't until neighbors call attention to it that anyone cares. If you're in the business or torture for torture's sake, perhaps keeping your victims awake should be part of it? Otherwise, the aliens seem to enjoy playing Sims with the family, and forcing them to do odd or even stupid behaviors that are more eerie or comic than horrific. There were a few ideas about alien abduction and experimentation worth playing with, and perhaps if Dark Skies had gone a straight science-fiction route, there'd be time to explore. Instead, they had to make time for more pointless nighttime mischief sequences, and even that dreaded staple: the house full of night vision cameras. Shoehorning horror into this story made it far less interesting than a more straightforward examination of a normal family slowly being undone by forces beyond their control. Consider Alcoholism as a sub-textual theme, and how that would have struck more universal fears than Terrorism.

As a film from the people who brought you Paranormal Activity, I left wondering how I'd spent so much time in that film being riveted, while seeing the same hallways and bedrooms left me bored out of my mind in this. My best explanation is a sense of scale: PA knew its focus and stayed true, whereas Skies opened up to an entire world of opportunities; from other locations and characters, to themes, to explanations and even genres. PA could be compared only to Blair Witch, but Skies could be compared to anything from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Little Children. So at its best, PA could do an excellent job fulfilling one very small niche, while at its best Skies would still miss a dozen opportunities and have scattered successes in fractions. Maybe there's just an incredible sense of disappointment in seeing someone do so much less with so much more.

Or it could just be that PG-13 horror is a waste of everyone's goddamned time.