Dark Skies (2013) [Movie Review]

Now, most of the people reading my reviews know that I'm not a fan of horror movies. I tend to find the plot in them to be terrible or non-existant, and the acting is almost always bad. This film was a pleasant surprise, to say the least. We take a step back from the Devil, and have a more realistic approach - Aliens. I'm not going to go on a rant about the existence of aliens, I'll just stop by saying aliens coming to Earth is probably more likely than the Devil coming to Earth.

So, Dark Skies features the typical American family. Daniel Barrett (Josh Hamilton) - the father, in desperate search of a job after being laid off. Lacy Barrett (Keri Russel) - the mother who overreacts to everything. The two fight over just about everything and are trying as hard as they can to get by, like I said, the typical American family. They have two children; Jesse Barrett (Dakota Goyo) - the oldest son, he was very sick when he was first born, which make the parents very protective of both children. And our final family member is Sam Barrett (Kadan Rockett) - the youngest, and first to be contacted by our friendly neighbors. 

Strange occurrences happen within the house. Ranging from the kitchen being raided, to all of the families pictures being taken out of their frames, the house security system going off - all sensors were triggered at the same time, but possibly the weirdest event is that three separate flocks of birds flew in to their house at the same time. With all of these events, the parents start being suspicious. Lucy searches the web and finds an "expert" on the matter. He tells them the best solution, and it. Is. On.

Obviously going in to the film, I was not expecting it to be good at all. And the beginning of the film didn't help with that theory. But as we progress through the film, we actually start getting a good plot structure. A few times you may even be on the edge of your seat! Another great feature of this film is the twists and turns along the way. Far too many horror movies follow the same boring plot structure, but this one changes it up for us. And the ending was phenomenal, I won't say anything about it, but it was great! All-in-all a great film, I would highly recommend it. My friend compared it to Signs (which I haven't seen yet, so I can't verify), so if you liked that, I'm sure you would like this one!

Rating: 8/10

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Discussion topic: How would you react to finding out your family is being watched by aliens (or some other being you couldn't stop)?