Blu-Ray Review: ‘DARK SKIES’

Dark Skies was a film I didn’t get to check out in the theaters but it has recently came out on Blu-Ray & DVD for me to view at my humble abode. The film tries to take a different approach than the previous films horror producer Jason Blum has done with Sinister & Insidious and make a more of a character piece with some creepy scenes.

The Movie

Dark Skies takes the typical Americana family of a wife & husband, their teenager son, Jesse, who is going through puberty and the curious younger brother named Sammy. The wife, Lacey, is a real estate agent who is responsible for bringing all the financial income due, to Daniel, the husband, being laid off from his architect job. A couple of nights in a row, weird stuff happens. A fridge open with food & soda on the ground and a weird canned food & plate configuration that has echoes of Poltergeist.  Once Sammy starts to have episodes in public, the family investigates to see if it is physical or psychological.

While the acting is adequate, the main problem with the film is it is just boring. It also doesn’t help that the script doesn’t flesh out our characters. The director and the writer for the film is Scott Stewart, who previously made bigger budget flops like Priest and Legion, who seems to be blind of how bad the script is and doesn’t build upon it. There are some poorly constructed character building scenes like one where Daniel wants to hide the fact that they are in a huge amount of debt. Daniel suggests to cut off cable to cut back on costs, keep in mind the TV is on and Lacey is prepping for her showings while Daniel is just hopping into the bed trying to get Lacey’s attention. Lacey balks at him for thinking of such a crazy idea since he just went on a job interview and he could hear back in a week that he got the job, justifying the cable bill. However, the alarm system for their home was not active so they could save some money. Cable vs. Security, cable wins in this household. The other problem with the film is that there are not enough scares or any creepy atmosphere to make you interested in generic characters. It gets to the point where you just want them to get past all these set pieces just to see how the thing is going to end.

If you haven’t nodded off by the time the grand finale comes, which includes a rushed 80’s montage of the characters getting ready for a siege including buying a German Shepard for protection, you will enjoy one of the most laughable scenes in the film (of note, it’s in the hallway). The aliens that you see at the end are pretty hilariously bad (more on that in the Special Features) and what respect you might of had for the movie for trying to take itself as a drama gets thrown out of the window.

The Presentation

Anchor Bay releases a nice looking Blu-Ray with Dark Skies. The film is competently shot and has a nice look to it. The image is clean with no signs of artifacts – as you would expect from a movie that just came out this year. The 5.1 DTSHD-MA audio track is exactly what you would think it is with a film like this. Jump scare stings are loud & evident along with decent bass noise (boy is that bird scene loud). All in all, Anchor Bay brings their A-game to a film that might not have brought theirs.

Special Features

This disc is not loaded but it does include some Alternate and Deleted Scenes. There seems to be a subplot that was cut out with the character of Sammy. The odd thing about this is what they cut out might of helped improve the film’s ending as the alternate ending is also on here and I think it is a better ending than the one in the film. The Alternate and Deleted Scenes actually come with commentary from the director Scott Stewart & editor Peter Gvozdas that convey a reason why they cut out the scenes.  The commentary with Stewart, Gvozdas along with Producer Jason Blum and Executive Producer Brian Kavanaugh-Jones is pretty level headed. They unveil that the film was low budget and Blum talks about how he is able to take risks with projects in general with his Blumhouse Productions moniker. “If it works, it works. If not, we tried.”

Overall

Sadly, the film isn’t the Extra-Terrestrial Insidious or Sinister that you might of expected. However since it lacks the elements of it being a horror film, it is also too silly to be a complacent drama.