Welcome back everyone! After my one day of having no substantial internet connection and just sort of giving up on watching Jane Fonda's breasts, I return, bringing a gift of a movie. What movie exactly? No, not the documentaries that were requested by people. Especially not the only one that got two votes. Why would you want me to watch a documentary? To talk about the issues intelligently? This is a movie review idiot, my job is to watch movies that you will likely never see and then tell you that they're probably bad.

The movie came to me from our good friend khaaan, who suggested the film Dark Skies, a movie that is boring and has children in it.

The plot of the movie is aliens who want to abduct a member of an upper middle class family in a nice house. These aliens have a history with the child that they abduct and have visited him before. At one point the aliens steal photographs of everyone in the house, and do weird things in the house at the very beginning of the movie. Or something.

If you watch this movie and are wondering why its basically Paranormal Activity the movie, that's because its made by the same people who did Paranormal Activity, the most terrifying marketing scheme in history. Unlike Paranormal Activity, this movie is not found footage, and is in fact a movie that couldn't be produced by your grandpa. Also unlike Paranormal Whatever, the enemies aren't a single demon but a bunch of aliens who do things for reasons we can't understand, mostly because the writer couldn't think of anything cool for the aliens to be doing.

There's a plot to this movie, but its basically unimportant because if you've seen the trailer, you know that its basically aliens and so all of the questions in the movie are answered before the movie begins. So, while the movie is at the very least competent and has some scenes that actually produce the mythical feeling of tension usually impossible in modern cinema, its an incredibly boring movie because the mystery of the plot has already been resolved before watching the film.

Is the acting good?

Its okay. The adults perform fine. Keri Russel is in this movie because she needs money, but she performs like an actress should and doesn't do anything stupid. The dialogue is idiotic in the way that all movie dialogue is idiotic, and they actually do say the words "an epic game of modern warfare" in the movie. You don't remember the line by the end of the film because you can barely remember seeing this movie even after you've seen it.

On a much more negative note, every child in this movie is atrociously bad. I understand that they're children and that getting children to act is hard, but the deliveries are terrible in every single way. The main kid, who I'm going to call Frank, has this weird, irritating, halting...speech pat....tern. You can see it in the trailer. Imagine that throughout an entire movie, where whole scenes are them listening to this kid awkwardly stop mid sentence to remember his line.

Look, child actors are still actors and being nice to children isn't the job of the director. The job of the director is to make take everything you can and mix it all up to make the best possible movie you can make with what you have. That means giving the actors room to create, but it also means recasting the child who can't act rather than just rolling with it. Is there seriously no other child actor who could've filled Frank's role? Anyone? I'll take a CGI kid. Seriously.

What about camera work?

The camera is completely functional the entire film, aside from a weird shaking attack when they ran down a 15 foot hallway away from CGI aliens. Nothing about the camera work is particularly striking or interesting; it zooms in when you'd expect it to zoom in, it movies around the room like you'd think a camera man would, and it still records film while doing this. That's about it. There's no interesting framing or anything, just a camera.

Is the story aliens?

Yes. The story aliens.

What's the best scene?

By far the dumb one where Felicity bangs her head on the glass door of a house she's trying to sell. You know, that one from the trailer, that basically sums up what everyone thought about this movie? That one.

Its stupid in the best possible way, which is precisely what it needed to be in this otherwise mediocre movie. In terms of actual quality scenes, there really isn't any. None of them are particularly memorable except for the dumb headpound one.

What about nudity?

At no point do you see Keri Russel get naked, and you don't even have the sweaty man back sex shot. You know, where the guy is missionary? I hate that shot. Its so dull, but at least its a sex shot, not awkward kissing under a blanket.

There is, however, a scene where the 13 year old chubby kid who'll have one of those really thin chins when he's older? The kid from Real Steel. Or Reel Steal. Whatever. That kid. He touches a 14 year old's boob. Its weird, which I think it was supposed to be, but he just seems weird and disinterested in being in this movie. Probably because he doesn't want to be in this movie, but they gave him a thing of hot pockets and 200 dollars or something.

What's the worst part of the movie?

The ending.

Okay, I understand that these movies are not made for a smart audience, and that they're basically for people who have difficulty comprehending why their chest inflates every time they awkwardly gasp for breath every so often, but really? Do you have to spell everything out for the audience?

So the film ends with the "X time period later" card, and you see Keri Russel going through boxes. She finds some pictures that Real Steel kid drew when he was just a wee little baby, and they're pictures of aliens. Oh man, that means the aliens had planned this all along! Okay, that's a decent twist that doesn't feel super dumb.

Oh wait, there's a flashback. A flashback that goes through all the symptoms of alien visitation and then gives specific examples we had already seen in the movie about how the kid met every single one of those examples. Okay. I get it movie. That's enough. Movie. Movie. Movie. Stop. Movie. Okay. Okay, I get it.

He was chosen since birth, I understand. Its really not that hard to grasp, you basically spelled it out in the picture, but how dumb must you think your audience is if you literally have to spell out every single reason why he was the ones the alien's wanted? I mean, we can assume that he was the one they wanted when the aliens took him. Generally when I want something, I pick it over things I want less. Like if I want chocolate, I tend to pick out a chocolate bar, not a bad child actor. Or if I want a woman, I awkwardly try to start conversation then sweat profusely while stuttering something about liking movies, then retreat to my corner and weep softly in to my copies of classic cinema.

Only Goodfellas can ever know the depth of my shame.

Oh also, when you think about it aliens are sort of dumb for a horror movie when they're the generic 1950s space aliens. Especially when they don't actually do anything besides prank you for a few days and take your misbehaving child that doesn't seem to want to be there anyway. That could've just been the actor though.

First Week Finished Mostly!

Awesome, I mostly did it! Jesus christ was that a lot of movies in one week. Except for Barbarella Queen of the Galaxy. I'll do that eventually.

What's next?

Well this week we've got quite a line up! No I'm just kidding, its pretty much going to be some more bullshit.

It's My Party and I'll Die if I Want To - Increasingly long movie titles? My Bloody Valentine - NOT THE 3D ONE! The best one. OG Canadian version represent. Adaptation - Oh man, I get to finally review a movie with my favorite actor! Hint, its Nicolas Cage. Birde- Oh fuck no. Fuck. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

FAN REQUEST FRIDAY

Lemme see 'em.