Dark Skies (2013)

It seems that lately I'm terribly uninspired in my choices. Since I didn't see a horror for quite a while I turned my attention to "Dark Skies". As parenthesis, I have to notice that unlike 10 years ago when I was addicted to this genre (and I hated comedies) I'm more and more reluctant to it (and I started to accept comedies .. sort of .. although I still find many to be somewhere between childish and stupid). Maybe it's the age = the everyday life stress, I don't know ... In any case, from time to time I appreciate a good horror ... Unfortunately thout, what we have here tends again, at least a bit towards a comedy (and the problem is with "at least a bit") ...

Long, long, looong ago am facut daca-mi aduc aminte un soi de clasificare pe subgenuri pentru horrors. Cred ca era ceva in genul: serial killers, alien monsters, zombies, haunting/atmospheric = demons, spirits si alte entitati, si poate si altele. Personal, in afara de ultima categorie restul pentru mine is in general doar entertaining fara prea mare potential de speriat efectiv. In ce priveste subgenul din urma se mai intampla sa mai am .. tresariri :). I guess that the haunting/atmospheric = demons, spirits and other entities horrors are the ones with the best "scare" potential. That's probably where the number of these has increased heavily throughout the last decade, from "The Ring" to "Paranormal Activity", and more recently "Sinister", "Mama", "Insidious" and others. Actually .. this subgenre has got so often approached that it starts to lose the effect. And to finish this double introduction, "Dark Skies" is the perfect example.

Remember "Signs" ? By M. Night Shyamalan ? I honestly don't recall too much. Just that the subject was something about a family that's targeted by an invasion of grey people from other galaxy. Something like that we have also in "Dark Skies", but approached in a way that wants you frightened at least once at each 10 minutes. More precisely, we have a couple, with two kids, living somewhere in a suburb, in whose house + also in the their behavior, various unexplained phenomenons start to appear (e.g., firstly the family fridge is devastated; I'll leave the rest to be discovered, otherwise there's nothing left .. already the trailer shows pretty much everything). The development sounds quite known I guess. Maybe if it would have taken the already "classic" direction of poltergeist activity the result would have been better in terms of "unrecommended before sleep". But the "more original" motivation for the activity of invisible malefic forces - which is:"the grey extraterrestrial are doing experiments on people for many many years already", makes many of the scenes in the movie at least far from logic if not hilarious.

I have to admit though that despite the script that would have failed by itself, the directing and the way the movie is shot can give you the creeps from time to time. There are a few scenes, especially one towards the end composed from let's call them "alternate reality visions" which can create a pretty unpleasant sentiment related to what the brain can produce in the moments when it gets .. lost. So maybe after all is not the best recommendation to see in the evening before sleep if you're more sensitive (unless you have to work during the night). But again, all these are valid individually without relating with the motivation in the movie. Which fortunately is not reminded continuously so sometimes you can forget about it. But it's enough to remember in most of the cases that it's not about any demented spirit, nor a possession case, not even madness, but just about invisible aliens well organized with a work plan (even though we don't know it in detail). I repeat myself, but the so called "scary effect" for a horror has a maximum impact especially when it's related with something acting irrational/unpredictable with purely malefic intentions (= classic haunting for instance). If I imagine the 5th division of grey creatures, in which agent 57 reports about the "nocturne terror" experiment on the Barrett's and the results obtained following his visits disguised as Sandman (forgetting about the sudden hunger and emptying the fridge as collateral victim) and also asking for funds to detour three stacks of birds to the respective house, well it already starts failing the horror criteria above ... Which may not be bad if you don't want to be scared :) But the result in this movie is that it's not as dark as it wants to be and, absurdly, not sufficiently comic to take it as light entertainment = is as grey as the "imminent" danger about which it tries to convince us ...

Rating: 3 out of 5 (at the limit)