The Barret family seems from all appearances to be your average middle class clan. Since we live in 2013 that means that at any given time at least one of the two parents is out of a job. As the story begins it's dad (Josh Hamilton) that's down on his luck. Mom (Keri Russell) is a real estate agent and their two kids Sam (Kadan Rockett) and Jesse (Dakota Goyo) are your typical 10 and 13 year olds. The family on display here is nearly a carbon copy of "Close Encounters" Neary family right down to the number of family members, the age and sex of the kids and the parental bickering caused by economic stress aggravated by external forces beyond anyone's control or comprehension.
But while there's some tension in the family at the outset things don't get really rough until one night while on a stroll through the quiet house mom discovers her fridge has been ransacked (another CE reference) and the back door is open. At first no one says much about it and then the youngest son Sam begins acting strangely; peeing his pants, walking in his sleep, telling tales of "the Sandman" visiting him during the night. Slowly, inexoribly tensions escalate with both parents experiencing strange black outs, bizarre natural phenomenon befalling the house and Sam sinking ever deeper and more often into his voodoo-like trances.
Finally, after losing an entire afternoon (not to mention her job) as a result of an on-the-job blackout mom has had enough and begins scouring the internet for any morsels of information that might lead her toward an answer. What she discovers is that hers is not the first family to experience such disturbing goings-on and that there's a guy who lives in a nearby town who claims to have the answers she's looking for. That man is Mr Simmons (Edwin Pollard) who spins a yarn for the concerned couple about an alien invasion that's already taken place and paints a picture of the invaders among us and what they want.
"Dark Skies" as I said borrows heavily from Close Encounters; from the middle American setting to the composition of the family to their roles and relationships to the aliens-raiding-the-fridge to a scene late in the film where tension is built by showing screws being unturned by unseen forces. But CE is not the only film that's left its fingerprints all over Scott Stewart's "Dark Skies". Another obvious influence is "Signs" and, to a lesser degree, "Paranormal Activity" (which should come as no surprise since the producers of this movie also produced PA).
Still in spite of the fact that at about 2 dozen points during the film I found myself thinking: "Hey, that's from ____________ " the film still worked for me because its well directed, well acted and if you're going to steal ideas from others you should steal from the best and do it well, and Stewart has done that here. Keri Russell and the kids do a great job with what they're given as does veteran Edwin Pollard. Maybe the only one in the cast who seems a bit out of place is Josh Hamilton, who never seems quite sure who his character is.
As I said at the beginning the thing that separates "Dark Skies" from "Super 8" is the ending and there's two reasons for that. The first is narrative and as such I can't really talk about it other than to say it's not Spielbergian in tone and the other reason is the blatant way the film opens the door for the sequel in its final frames. Spielberg would not have imagined doing such a thing when he was making his seminal blockbusters of the 70s and 80s and as such JJ Abrams made sure his homage to Spielberg also was not a cheap set up for a franchise. But these are the folks who made a half-baked horror flick like Paranormal Activity into a serial cash-cow and so it's not really a surprise that they'd grab for the franchise ring with this film's last breath. Still, it's all so TV.
Verdict: ★★★☆☆
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