Dark Skies is mildly frightening

If you like alien movies or horror movies, you’ll probably like “Dark Skies.”

Not because it’s especially good.

You’ll like it because it’s simply elements from almost every recent alien or horror movie slapped together and loosely set to the plot of “Poltergeist.”

You’d think we’d know by now that, while mashups can sometimes be genius, they can also go terribly, terribly wrong. The fewer songs being mashed up, the better the final product usually turns out. The same principle should have been applied to this movie. Watching it is like one long bout of déjà vu, which is tragic because it could have been so cool.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

The movie unites all of its clichés with the premise that aliens have actually been on Earth for decades, arbitrarily messing with us without our knowledge. It’s an interesting concept, explained fantastically by character actor J.K. Simmons later in the film. He plays a man that the aliens, or “Greys,” have targeted. He explains that we’re like lab rats to their all-powerful scientists.

As the film’s tagline says, “Once you’ve been chosen, you belong to them.” All you can do is make it difficult for them to study and possibly abduct you, like a rat that bites those testing it, hoping that it will just be left alone.

It’s an original approach, and one with lots of potential, but the execution was disappointing.

The Greys’ latest targets are the Barrett family. Keri Russell, in one of the few good performances in the film, plays a concerned mother opposite the utterly boring Josh Hamilton. The younger of their two sons has seemingly been targeted for study and eventual abduction, but soon all of them are subjected to paranormal events, suffering intermittent bouts of alien-head-implant-induced insanity.

These incidents are framed by a subplot of unemployment anxiety and badly acted “family drama.”  It was an attempt to make the characters more sympathetic, but it only weighs the movie down with unnecessary melodrama. Hamilton stupidly rumbles around as the grumpy family patriarch, yelling unnecessarily and just generally annoying everyone (viewers included). He‘s that annoying adult character in every horror movie that almost screws everyone over because of his stubborn disbelief.

It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, whether in M. Night Shymalan’s “The Happening,” the aforementioned “Poltergeist,” or, most noticeably, “Signs” and “Paranormal Activity.” 

The film is billed as being “From the Producer of ‘Paranormal Activity,’” so its familiarity makes sense. The filmmakers are just using pop-horror formulas that they know work. Sadly, though, working isn’t the same thing as entertaining.

You certainly won’t regret seeing “Dark Skies.” You may not love it, but you won’t hate it. If you go with a date, it will give you a few good scares and some solid excuses for hand-holding.

But it’s nothing revolutionary, and if you’re looking for the kind of good, twist-driven horror-suspense film that will keep you thinking about it for hours afterwards, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

Take it from a wimp like me: I’m usually scared by any even remotely frightening film — even M. Night Shymalan’s “The Village” managed to spook me— but I pretty much forgot about this movie a few minutes after I left the theater.

“Dark Skies” serves its purpose and doesn’t try for anything more. It’s really a pity, because I can’t get over the idea that it could have been good.