Sometimes, a line from a movie is so laughably bad, you can’t help but wonder what was going through the writer’s head when he or she wrote it. “Dark Skies” contains a humdinger of a line. I’ll set it up for you:
A husband and wife are arguing about whether or not they should put one of their kids in therapy. Strange Things® have been happening in their house that seem to be centered on their youngest of two sons, but the husband isn’t sure they can afford the treatments. So the wife screams, I kid you not: “He’s not a cable bill, he’s our son!”
It yanked me out of the movie. Not that the journey was far. “Dark Skies” is replete with cringe-worthy moments, not all of which are centered on poorly penned dialogue. Some include characters looking blankly into the distance while music swells, mouth open in a silent scream. Another truly awful scene has the dad shaking his youngest son senseless in the middle of a children’s park while the kid stands there screaming at nothing. If you’re a fan of bad movies, I wholly recommend “Dark Skies.”
I should fill in some of the blanks.
“Dark Skies” opens with an Arthur C. Clarke quote that deserves a much better movie to follow it: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
This quote contains a spoiler of sorts. You might go into “Dark Skies” expecting a horror movie in the supernatural vein. But that’s not what it is. Rather, it’s a sci-fi flick that chewed bits and pieces off of far superior movies, swallowed them, and then regurgitated a green, soupy, putrid mess.
Cinematic inspirations include “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Signs,” “Paranormal Activity, “Poltergeist,” “Birds” and, if my eyes didn’t deceive me, a shot from Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” “Dark Skies” lacks a single original idea or image.
Back to filling in the blanks:
Dad, mom, kids, and a dog that shows up in the last 20 minutes are living in the aforementioned house. As I wrote, Strange Things® have been happening: cereal boxes stack themselves on their kitchen table, 800 birds smack into the house, people black out and lose track of time, and so on. The soundtrack, which comes from the “louder is better” school of thought, is very helpful during these oddly drab, suspenseless scenes in letting us know when we should be scared.
This goes on for about an hour without an ounce of tension. Oh, the dad is a skeptic and the mom is a believer, blah blah blah, but he comes around and they go see The Man They Find on the Internet Who Can Explain Everything®.
Then they go home, and a bizarre sequence leads up to the last shot, which did surprise me a little. It was too little, too late, though.
As the credits rolled, someone in the back of the theater complained loudly about having wasted time and money. I didn’t tell him I’d found the movie tremendously entertaining, though not for the reasons the filmmakers intended, I’m sure.
No one sets out to make a bad movie, but somehow, bad movies are made. With “Dark Skies,” there’s plenty of blame to go around, but it ultimately comes down to the director, who should have known the script didn’t work, who should have seen how goofy the open-mouthed stares looked, and who should have worked the awkward kinks out of the performances.
That said, if you like badly made movies, I give “Dark Skies” a hearty recommendation. See it with like-minded friends.
Rated PG-13 for violence, terror, sexual material, drug content, and language – all involving teens. One star out of four, the one star being for Keri Russell’s performance. An excellent actress, she seems aware of being stuck in a bad movie, but is a good sport about it.