Leading up to the theatrical release of "Dark Skies," distributor Dimension Films did not exactly inspire optimism in impending viewers. Not only did the picture not screen in advance for press—nearly always a stark sign of a studio's lack of faith in the quality of their product—but memos were sent out to theater chains forbidding them to run the film at late-Thursday midnight showings. This latter occurrence was then, at the last minute, retracted, but by then feelings of doubt had already materialized. Having now seen "Dark Skies," one can only question and scoff at Dimension's gross negligence in supporting what is sure to go down as one of 2013's early sleeper surprises, an intensely evocative, absolutely spine-tingling thriller that paints an empathetic portrait of realistically strained modern-day suburban domesticity before little by little introducing a rasping pall of doom decidedly a bit more troubling than some missed mortgage payments. It is a terrible shame that the movie now must carry with it a negative stigma because it's a whole lot better than that, earning the right through its very intelligence and air-tight grasp of informed genre filmmaking to be uttered in the same breath as 1993's "Fire in the Sky" and 2002's "Signs."
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