Tuesday Night is Film is going out of it's comfort zone tonight with a horror / sci-fi / thriller movie. Will it be a sleepless night tonight after we have seen;
Dark Skies
There's a reason why we tend not to watch horror movies here at TNiFN Towers, it's because we don't really like them! However, to ensure a fair spread of genres over the films we watch we decided to give this horror / sci-fi / thriller a try, after all the trailer did look intriguing. So what is it all about we hear you ask, let us explain.
Lacy and Daniel Barrett (Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton) live in a normal house, on a normal suburban street, in a normal American town, with their two normal sons; Jesse and Sam (Dakota Goyo and Kadan Rockett). However this normality starts to deteriorate as strange things start happening to the house and the family. Although they seem innocent, but inexplicable at first, they soon turn more sinister, severe and totally inexplicable, which in turn starts to eat away at the foundation of the Barrett's family, with Daniel and Lacy not knowing who or what to believe.
When things get so bad, they turn to a local man; Edwin Pollard, played by J.K. Simmons who has first hand experience in these pseudo-supernatural experiences and he attributes them to aliens.
As a story it is very dark, but pretty weak. The cross over between thriller, horror and sci-fi does not really work. It's like a mash up of ET and Paranormal Activity, with a modicum of Close and Encounters of the Third Kind thrown in for good measure. As a result, it is neither one thing or another. The only thing that it definitely is; is scary! Yes, if you do not like horror films then make sure you have a cushion or something similar to hide behind.
As with most horror films, it is not necessarily the things you see that are spine-chilling, but the things you don't. Very good use of music and sound effects raise the tension to formidable heights and it is this tension and apprehension that gets the hairs standing up on the back of your neck and a cold shiver running down your spine. However the thrills are short lived and the story continues, but it is not much of a story and that gripping tension soon fades.
From a horror genre, it is fairly standard and formulaic, it provides the necessary thrills and chills with a smattering of sinister events for you to ponder over, but with the inclusion of the alien element, therefore making it totally unworldly, does not work and the storyline is lacklustre as a result. It would have been better if they had hidden this part until the very end rather than picking it up halfway through, as a result the events lost a lot of their gravitas as we knew the perpetrators.
So this genre has now been dealt with and so it's time to move back to the security of some well liked genres, we'll see what next week brings.
As for the scores, Dark Skies is not going to break any records this week as it gets;
TNiFN Rating 59%
IMDB Link
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