Dark Skies (2013)★★★★☆

This is another movie I’d tried to watch before but couldn’t really get into. Only this time I really got into it, and was surprised by how much I liked it. I shouldn’t be so surprised, I guess. The cast is solid, and they work really well together. They really feel like a family.

It’s hard to do well with alien abduction stories. It’s hard to find the right balance of science fiction and plausibility to make alien abduction scary rather than campy, but this one does pretty well. There’s definitely a high creep factor throughout this one.

And that scene where Keri Russell is wandering through the living room and the lights are off but the TVs are on…well I was literally biting my nails during that.

But the best thing about this movie is that the twist is revealed at exactly the right pacing. Okay, maybe that was the second best thing about this movie. The best thing about this movie is the J.K. Simmons cameo. If you watch it just for that, you won’t be disappointed.

But if you’re paying attention, you might predict the twist before it happens. Interestingly, I did predict it, but knowing what was going to happen didn’t make me enjoy the film any less (as it often does). The timing was right, the reveal was perfect, and it fit within the story. There were just enough clues dropped along the way that the story flowed perfectly.

I did get a little annoyed that they did that Sixth Sense-esque thing where they flash back through some of the clues that were dropped earlier, though. But only a little, because J.K. Simmons was in that flashback.