All Critics (50)
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Top Critics (13)
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Fresh (15)
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Rotten (35)
There's little to fear from this rather tame genre outing.
Dark Skies is sort of supernatural, but it's really more super natural....[it's] about the fragility of family, a muted meditation on how precious it is.
Stewart has some lofty ambitions, some of which he almost fulfills.
Those elements are employed with consummate dexterity.
Dark Skies is a bore that even the most forgiving genre buffs will find difficult to defend or endure.
It's not that Dark Skies is so awful you need to be warned away from it. It's just that it's so bland you might as well find something better to do.
A tepid attempt at making an alien abduction yarn into a Paranormal Activity movie (a dubious enough notion at best) -- and a boring little movie.
...now more than ever, terror begins at home -- especially when the evil forces are ruining expensive cuts of meat and overturning gallon jugs of milk onto the floor.
Dire and unsettling, it's ultimately disappointing.
Dark Skies is not only about invading aliens whose psychology is so removed from ours as to make them totally unknowable, it was apparently written by them.
Effectively unsettling, Dark Skies is a science-fiction thriller that plays like an episode of The Twilight Zone crossed with Poltergeist.
Why do aliens unload the pantry and stack items in the form of an abstract art project, or make little boys wet their pants? Who knows, and who cares.
Dark Skies is a drama of the fraught modern world, but Stewart doesn't tie it together. He just throws it all out there in the hope that something will stick.
What it lacks in originality, it almost makes up for with strong performances ...
Not screening movies like Dark Skies for critics is a ploy generally met with disapproval. But that's the wrong way to look at the practice. Maybe studios should be encouraged to go a step further and not screen movies like Dark Skies for anyone at all.
A really dumb movie about aliens among us - but the two kid actors are great!
There's some cool plot points provided by otherwordly expert J.K. Simmons, but they quickly get lost in the shuffle of a boring movie that feels all too familiar.
I can't recommend this to anyone other than hardcore extraterrestrial junkies.
Despite building a tense atmosphere upon a solid premise, Dark Skies is far too unoriginal and vanilla to earn anything more than a casual dismissal.
... a bland blend of UFO procedural and the original Amityville Horror ... You can't fault Stewart for attempting a more atmospheric, Ray Bradbury approach to the genre. Too bad he, like Mrs. Barrett, is slamming his head against a sliding door.
Blumhouse Productions has codified its horror template to the point that their films are the cinematic equivalent of blues ... you will hear the same 12-bar chord progression, hitting the same beats...
Since all the second-hand ingredients are delivered without much style of flair, the movie makes for a pretty insipid dish.
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Top Critic
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