Dark Skies

Once in a while there comes along a movie who sets itself apart from others, this one is such.
When I saw there was a new horror from the producer of "Paranormal activity" and "insidious" (my two all time favourite horror pictures) I coudn't be anything other than exited.

I watch a whole bunch of horror movies, just recently "The grudge", "Mama" and "The shining" to name a few. None of the above mentioned left me "touched" like this one did.

A family of four are starting to experience unusual occurences in their house. The home intruder alarm is set off, all sensors at the same time, without anyone actually beeing in the house. All photos dissapear from their frames and a prismatic sculpture appears in their kitchen, projecting ringmarked shapes in the ceiling.
The youngest son Sam soon reveals that he has been speaking to someone in the night, someone he refers to as the "sandman". One night the mother Lucy wakes up and walks around the house to check nobody is there, only to find a slim dark figure bent over her son's bed, only to dissapear the next second.

The sky is darker than ever. One can only ponder the question, which is more terrifying; beeing alone in the universe or finding out that we aren't.

  The pure suspence this move creates is astonishing, it never went dull and for the first time in a very long time I actually felt somewhat scared as the titlescreen started rolling.

The critique Dark skies has recieved is that it's not "visually spectacular" or the "CGI was lacking".

That is EXACTLY why it is so much better than others in its genre in my view.

Fear is and has always been aroused by the unknown, not knowing what is awaits us is frightening.

That's what the movie business has gotten all wrong, big computer generated monsters running around the screen howling and cracking skulls with blood splashing everywhere is not scary. Things that we can not relate to in our own reality is not frightening for the same reason. What we don't see on the screen is most times more fearsome than what we do. Our own imagination is doing all the hard work here.

Psychological horrors/thrillers as this really reach under your skin. Buildning suspense around acting, a screenplay that packs a punch and capturing shots the right way is some of the things movie making should be all about. That beeing said; Dark Skies does all this. It's dark, artful and terrifying.  

All in all it has its downs too. Some things were a bit too stereotypical, a bit more creativity here wouldn't have hurt. Yes the CGI wasn't a major part of the movie but the parts that were actually there didn't look remarkable.

Despite that this is easily one of my top three horror pictures of all time, adding to paranormal activity and insidious.

8 out of 10.