Nothing sends chills down viewers’ spines like haunted house movies. It’s a timeless
premise that taps into our collective fears. Who hasn’t been home alone one night and
suddenly felt the hair on the back of their neck stand up? We’re hardwired to fear creepy
houses where things go bump in the night.
Writer-director Scott Stewart’s Dark Skies takes the classic haunting premise and adds
a modern spin. Stewart eases viewers in with a series of haunted house movie cliches before
obliterating expectations with a sci-fi twist.
Lacy (Keri Russell) and Daniel Barrett (Josh Hamilton) look like they’re living the American
dream. The Barretts have two healthy sons, Jesse (Dakota Goyo) and his little brother
Sam (Kadan Rockett). They live together on a perfect little small-town America street.
They may be keeping up appearances, but all is not right behind closed doors. Daniel is
out of work with no prospects, and the family is behind on their bills. Making matters worse,
Jesse has been acting out.
When young Sam tells everyone the Sandman visits him at night, it’s just one more
concern to add to the growing pile. It turns out the family’s plunging credit score is
the least of their problems. Sam’s nighttime visitations are a precursor to something much
worse.
The whole family starts witnessing strange phenomena. Something keeps tripping their
alarm system at night, and they’re waking up to find their furniture rearranged, Poltergeist
style. Soon after, people start blacking out and waking up with strange marks on their
bodies. When Daniel combs over his new video surveillance system, he discovers a presence
that defies explanation.
Dark Skies uses a less is more approach to scare the bejesus out of you. The film explores
an extraordinary sci-fi premise through the lens of an intimate drama about a struggling
family.
Dark Skies hit theatres in 2013, so I’ll give a minor spoiler warning here. And I say
minor because the film’s opening title card shares an Arthur C. Clarke quote that spoils
the mystery. The supernatural presence menacing the Barretts isn’t ghosts, demons, or a
child’s psychic manifestations. It’s grey aliens.
You feel the alien presence more than you see it. And when you do see the creatures,
they’re often out of focus or obscured in shadow. Stewart doesn’t rely on blood, guts,
and fancy monster effects to freak out viewers. Instead, he prefers to slip in under your
radar to mess with you on a gut level.
The film’s scariest scenes occur at night, but you sense the alien intruders preying
on the Barretts, even while the sun is shining. Cinematographer David Boyd’s camera often
looms high in the sky, like an all-seeing predator hunting the characters down below.
Behind closed doors, the camera inches its way towards the Barretts, like it’s playing
a sinister game of Mother May I.
The grey aliens here make terrifying antagonists because they’re unknowable. We don’t know
what they want and why they’re messing with this one family. The scariest aspect of the
Barrett’s situation is that they have no way to fight back. The story builds to an
over-the-top showdown between the Barretts and the invaders. The climax feels like a
letdown because it betrays the movie we thought we were watching. It seems like the result
of a script that painted itself into a corner.
What stands out about Dark Skies is how this tale of space invaders doesn’t feel sci-fi.
Its style and tone align with classic haunted house flicks like The Conjuring, Insidious,
and Paranormal Activity. The Barretts don’t know they’re dealing with aliens until J.K.
Simmons’ weary Ufologist Edwin Pollard shows up late in the second act to drop some knowledge.
Here’s where things get interesting. Dark Skies is based on a real-life phenomenon known
as alien abduction. People who experience alien abductions (abductees) report waking
up in the night paralyzed and seeing short grey beings standing over their bed. Abductees
describe being brought on board a craft against their will where they’re experimented on
before being returned home. How creepy is that?
These stories sound like the stuff of pulp novels. Yet, they’ve been reported for decades
by thousands of people from all around the world. Alien abduction mythology exploded
in popularity in the ‘80s and ‘90s with the mainstream success of the best-selling
novel Communion and the hit series The X-Files. South Park’s famous anal probe jokes come
from what real-life traumatized human beings have reported.
Most alleged abductees are mentally stable people with accomplished careers. Many of
them don’t want their accounts publicized and don’t try to profit from their stories.
Some have passed lie detector tests, and many seek therapy to deal with the emotional trauma
inflicted by these encounters. It doesn’t matter whether alien abductions are real or
imagined; people who experience them actually believe they’re true.
Alien abduction mythology is a ripe source for horror movie adaptations. Hollywood began
churning out alien abduction movies in the ‘70s with The UFO Incident – a TV movie
based on the story of Betty and Barney Hill. The Hills, who claimed to be abducted by aliens
during a 1961 road trip, are the first Americans to publicly disclose this type of extraterrestrial
encounter.
Even alien abduction movies have been around for almost 50-years now, no filmmaker has
made a great alien abduction movie. Communion, Fire in the Sky, and Intruders include a handful
of standout moments, but each film has too many flaws to be considered a good overall
film.
Stewart scores points for staying true to “accepted” alien abduction lore. Dark
Skies covers abduction-related phenomena such as missing time, implants, fugue states, PTSD,
and grey aliens. It still isn’t the deepest exploration of alien lore, but the film does
an excellent job mining these elements for bone-chilling scares.
Dark Skies asks viewers to consider the unthinkable. What if human beings are not earth’s apex
predators? What if some higher forms of intelligence are toying with us like rats in a maze?
If you’re looking for an eerie haunting movie, you could do a lot worse than Dark
Skies, which is a decent, albeit flawed choice. While it’s slow and features thinly-sketched
characters, it’s still capable of getting underneath your skin to unnerve you.
In the plus column, Dark Skies features great performances from Russell, Hamilton, and Simmons,
excellent production values, and a chilling premise. It’s all good fun until it flies
off the rails in the final act. Dark Skies will appeal to people into alien
abduction mythology. It’s also one of the better cinematic representations of alien
abduction lore, which speaks volumes about the sad state of this underserved genre.