Review

The Barrett family are living the white American suburban middle class thing out in Our Town U.S.A. Daniel Barrett is between jobs and is being overwhelmed by bills, wife Lacy is keeping food on the table via selling real estate, son Jessie is rebellious and starting to notice girls, and sub teen Sam likes scary stories about the "Sandman", who apparently takes little kids' eyes. The American dream folks, sans dog as Daniel is allergic to them, until the final block that is. Actually what ever happened to the dog, did it abandon home and do a runner?

Naturally things start to go strange as Daniel and Lacy discover they have intruders, intruders who like to play with the food in their kitchen. As the disturbances escalate, and Daniel goes home security to little effect, the Barretts are confronted with something they don't want to believe. Help is at hand however via expert Edwin Pollard who warns that the intruders are going to abduct their youngest son if Daniel and Lacy can't put up strong resistance. Can the Barretts hold off an alien menace or will they be torn apart by the final assault of ET with an attitude?

Director Scott Stewart has previously dropped Legion (2010) and Priest (2011) on us so I was somewhat disappointed to see his name on the credits. For a number of weeks I had been eyeing off Dark Skies at my local DVD rental place, but since they only had one copy it was always out when I was looking at hiring something. Finally getting a chance I snuffled the disc and rushed home to check out what some Critics are claiming as one of the best horror movies of the year, then Stewart's name came up in the credits and I simply slumped. Surprisingly the Director did capture my attention and hold it with Dark Skies, and I'm going to state for the record that this movie is the best one Stewart had directed thus far.

There's a basic two punch thing you need to do in horror to get a movie working. Firstly you have to introduce characters that the audience are going to feel sympathetic towards, folks who we'll be concerned about. Stewart takes his time introducing the audience to the Barrett family as we get to know each member and can jive to their situation. Whether it's Daniel who has financial issues and is trying to hide the fact from friends or neighbours, Lacy who is simply too nice and honest to effectively sell real estate, or Jesse who is just finding out about girls I was caught up in the domestic and grooving to what I was seeing on my screen, Stewart had me feeling good thoughts about his family unit. The second thing you need to do in a horror movies is take your sympathetic characters and throw them in harm's way, Stewart does that effectively here, though to be honest I was getting more of a Poltergeist vibe from the movie than The Fourth Kind style of chill mongering. Anyways, Director Stewart hits the horror requirements and knocks one out of the ball park in doing so.

While the movie had a couple of nagging issues I rocked out to it.

What I particularly liked about the movie was Stewart's ability to slowly build the tension and keep the viewer on the edge of their seat with the anticipation of seeing something that is never quite revealed. As the situation worsens Stewart introduces his alien expert in Edwin Pollard who raises increased concerns with pertinent information about what the intergalactic home invaders may be after. There are also some quite nice scenes where differing members of the Barratt family are under alien influence. While there are a few jump scenes they aren't overly played and thank the Lord we don't get loud crashing music announcing each shock scene. Stewart has his traditional horror on and exploits it to create a fully functional horror movie that might masquerade to some folk as a Sci-Fi outing.

Now there is a tad of Paranormal Activity to the movie with Daniel Barrett installing the requisite CCTV coverage of his whole house, apparently the first reaction of the American home owner when faced with something slightly out of the ordinary, or teenagers. Stewart relies on the CCTV footage to nail a few plot ideas down and surprisingly it works like a brought one. Rather than having you wonder if Americans walk around all day filming everything that moves, the footage is only to try and determine what is happening in the house after the local Police prove inept by any measure of law enforcement and the security company think there's some weird fault with the home security system. I'm not going to elaborate on how the footage is used, but would just like to point out its pretty solid and logical. For those who froth at the mouth at the mere mention of "found footage", its only purpose is as a plot device and is used very sparingly.

I should also mention that Director Stewart has the movie by the short and curlies, there's no plot devices left up in the air or ideas forgotten about, everything is tied up neat and tidy.

Naturally there are a few issues with the movie and at stages they threaten to unravel what we are watching. There's a few scenes that are so dark it's almost impossible to make out what's happening, this in the main is due to Hollywood's obsession with the idea that people will walk around their darkened houses looking for intruders rather than switching the lights on. Sorry even if I get up to grab a glass of water in the middle of the night, or that last piece of leftover chicken, I'm turning on the odd light. If some freaky is happening then every light in the place is going on, human nature folks, we are all reduced to whimpering cave dwellers scared of the dark if there's odd noises going down.

But the major problem is with the cast that either works, as is the case with Keri Russell and Dakota Goyo, or phones it in as Josh Hamilton did. At no stage of the movie's running time was I ever convinced by Hamilton that I wasn't watching a movie.

T&A isn't a starter for 10, Keri Russell shows off her legs but that's about it beyond a few interesting tops she dons. Gorehounds with be left scratching at the back door as Stewart isn't about to go anywhere more interesting with his house invaders, though the final scene is certainly top notch in a sort of unexpected fashion.

As stated above I had been hanging to get a viewing of this movie, which the Distributor decided to release under the radar without much hype. What I got was a pretty good movie that kept the scares light but which worked through its atmosphere and tension. End of day I wasn't overly disappointed but then I didn't get a movie that immediately rocketed into my top ten dark genre releases of the year. I did enjoy Stewarts fly overhead shots that made you wonder what was out there but I didn't get that chill down my spine a good scary movie will install. Recommended folks, worth a look but you can safely wait till it hits the weekly rental shelves. Your skies won't suddenly darken with storm clouds on the horizon if you are the last person on your block to catch this flick. Got to say in closing however that this was a far superior alien movie than the overly hyped and flawed The Fourth Kind, don't get me started on that Apollo 18 tripe!