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Movie commercials offer us a great service; they not only show us which upcoming movies look good, but also which ones to avoid. And if one looks closely, they often reveal more than intended about the film in question. In honor of this profound art, I give you TRAILER TRACKS, an examination of upcoming movie commercials: What they say, what they don’t say, and what they say on accident about the product being sold to you, the excited chump.
Today’s Entry:
Dark Skies (Dir. Scott Charles Stewart)
Introduction:
I’m glad we seem to be entering a new horror phase centered around aliens. Normally fenced in by science fiction genre tropes, the idea of an advanced race of creatures to whom we seem like walking turds seems quite terrifying, especially when we take the idea a bit further by assuming they’d travel so many lightyears just to screw with us.
The Set Up:
So it looks like Keri Russell (who always looks really familiar to me, as if I know her from something other than just being Keri Russell) and Josh Hamilton (who also looks really familiar to me, I think because of the 50 times I watched Alive as a child) are being hunted by aliens.
Alien tomfoolery manifests itself in many odd ways. Our first indicator comes when Keri Russell discovers every item from their kitchen unnaturally stacked into neat geometrical shapes. So we know the aliens like Ghostbusters.
Then there’s a part where tons of birds slam into the Russell-Hamilton house as if drawn by a giant bird-magnet. So we know the Aliens enjoy Stephen King’s The Dark Half.
The aliens don’t just mess with inanimate objects and birds, either. In one part they make Keri Russell slam her head into a glass door like a mental patient. They also make Josh Hamilton stand outside with his mouth wide open, just to see how many flies he catches.
So they’re pretty annoying aliens, is what I’m saying.
The Problem:
Well, it’s hard to raise a family when aliens are constantly trying to mess with you. They seem especially focused on the little boy. Things get heated when he goes to school and his nosey teacher, disrobing him in preparation for a molestation session, finds someone already got there first. He’s covered with long poo-shaped bruises.
Those might be odd looking bruises, but they don’t look at all like cattle-branding, which is how we next see a doctor identify them. This can mean only one thing: Aliens brand their cattle not with burns but bruises.
Now that everyone thinks they beat their child, the Russell-Hamilton family has to work twice as hard to stay together and out of prison. See, the aliens want Russell and Hamilton put away, so they can legally adopt the young boy and make him an alien sex slave.
The Solution:
Whenever aliens come to your house and stack all your kitchen supplies while making you stand outside with your mouth open, all so they can kidnap your child, there’s only one man to call: J.K. Simmons.
It just so happens that J.K. Simmons is playing an expert on obnoxious aliens in another movie, so he’s filled with tons of alien info for this one. Unfortunately, he only has bad news: “Sorry. You’re all going to die.”
So they all die. Only J.K. Simmons gets a happy ending, and that’s because he goes to a massage parlor in yet another film.
In Summation:
I have a feeling this is one all my horror friends will recommend. I’m not so sure I’ll enjoy it, though. These kind of films usually have really slow burns without scares big enough to justify them. Plus, the director has three first names. It’s hard to trust a guy like that.
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