After the success stories of Paranormal activity, Insidious and Sinister, their producer along with writer and director Scott Stewart has come up with yet another unnerving thriller and this time with a little bit of science fiction horror treatment to it. Dark Skies has got a truly terrifying story dealing with a sci-fi twist and being delivered this good you definitely cannot miss a chance to watch it.
The story starts off with a middle class couple dealing with financial problems where Daniel (Josh Hamilton) is a designer switching between jobs and wife, Lacy (Keri Russell), an estate agent, aids in supporting her husband battle money troubles and trying to make ends meet. This is well set up and made to look realistic because many families these days face similar financing issues. They also have two sons, Jesse (Dakota Goyo) who is a typical teenager and Sam (Kadan Rockett), a toddler. They are all living a fair life until strange occurrences begin to take place.
Lacy wakes up in the middle of the night and quite frequently finds things out of their place. Sometimes it’s the furniture and quite a few times the fridge being raided by some unknown person but their little one claims that the “sandman” told him about it. The parents tend to ignore it until the children begin complaining about strange marks on their bodies. Soon, each family member begins to act strange and possessed and not long after that CCTV cameras are installed around that house. Nothing strange or paranormal is seen on these footages but the same events happen continuously.
The set up of Dark Skies along with the storyline is quite old fashioned but much praised because of it never gives up on the suspense yet keeps building up till the very end. The family is constantly trying to investigate on what is that is after them because no first person perspective is ever found on the CCTV cameras’ footage.
After the second half of the movie though, Dark Skies begins to feel like a drag because it holds up the key surprise until the very end which does, quite interestingly, pull off as a big surprise. Scott Stewart has combined quite a few ideas ranging from those of Paranormal activity to the Poltergeist but with a unique twist at the very end, not quite different from what many of us have seen before though but definitely a jumpy twist. A very well appearance has been given by J K Simmons as well in the movie for a short span of time. The actors have managed to pull off fairly well as well with Keri Russell playing her role excellently.
However, Dark Skies is not one which you might have not heard off before because it does involve the quite recent tales of super naturalism and paranormal activities but some people found it quite successful and who knows you might too. It definitely is a movie worth watching if you are looking to kill some time with heart-thumping thrills that will keep you on the cliff hanger until the very end.
