“Aliens are dicks” in crappy ‘Dark Skies’ movie

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

"Yawn!" Alien abduction horror Dark Skies is "boring", not scary, say movie critics.

 

Now showing in US cinemas, the alien abduction horror Dark Skies is taking a kicking from movie critics who are describing it as “bland,” “banal,” and “boring.” 

Writing for io9.com, reviewer Rob Bricken’s only take-home message from the film is that “Aliens are dicks.”

Bricken notes that “Dark Skies contains more snores than scares... and definitely nothing you haven't already seen in pretty much any other alien horror flick.”

What was marketed as a powerful family drama with supernatural / sci-fi overtones “just slowly deflates into a by-the-numbers horror flick you'd be better off skipping in theaters and on home video.”

Bricken concludes: “As a viewer, I left the theater bored and somewhat annoyed. If I were an alien, though, I'd have been downright offended.”

Dark Skies– which stole (yes stole) its title from the completely unrelated and far superior UFO-themed ‘90s TV series of the same name – is currently scoring just 36% on RottenTomatoes.com.

Peter Sobczynski of the Chicago Sun-Times calls Dark Skies “a bore that even the most forgiving genre buffs will find difficult to defend or endure.”

Writing for the New York Daily News, Elizabeth Weitzman was similarly uninspired by the film: “It's not that Dark Skies is so awful you need to be warned away from it. It's just that it's so bland you might as well find something better to do.”

Entertainment Weekly’s Clark Collis, meanwhile, writes: “Sci-fi and horror fans know to keep watching the skies – but they won't be missing too much if they decide to skip this.”

For those who are insistent on forking out their hard-earned cash this month on sci-fi drama by the name of Dark Skies, give the cinema a miss... Your money will be far better spent here.

'Dark Skies' Vs. 'Dark Skies'

Silver Screen Saucers

 

 

From the Creators of the Original “Dark Skies” (NBC, Sony)

Written by Bryce Zabel & Brent V. Friedman

November 29, 2012

Friends and supporters have been contacting us, many with congratulations on how our “Dark Skies” has been made into a new film, starring Keri Russell, to be released by Dimension Films next February. While it sounds like a dream, we tell them, it’s actually a nightmare.

To set the record straight, we’re Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman, the two writer/producers who created the NBC series called “Dark Skies.” It was produced by Columbia TV (now Sony) and aired in 1996 and 1997. We wrote the pilot, multiple episodes and produced all twenty hours that were aired in primetime on Saturday nights. 

Our original “Dark Skies” introduced viewers to an alien invasion that featured a continuing focus on the mysterious and terrifying abduction phenomenon. So our well-intentioned friends can be forgiven if they hear about the Dimension Films version that focuses on an alien abduction and assume we had something to do with it. While that is decidedly not the case, our definitive version may have inspired it. 

Our “Dark Skies” had been in the news even before Dimension decided to use our title for their film. Our series was given a world-wide release on DVD in 2011 from both Shout Factory (US) and Medium Rare Entertainment (UK). In dozens of reviews, the work received critical praise as a classic that has stood the test of time in the sci-fi and UFO media. It also spawned new interest in the reboot of our series, something that we were talking to Sony TV about when the news from Dimension Films broke.

Our "Dark Skies" has established itself in the minds of a significant number of science fiction fans as a gripping piece of conspiracy drama set in the world of UFOs and abductions. It anchored NBC's Saturday night "Thrillogy" concept in the 1996 season premiere and starred Eric Close ("Nashville") and the late film character actor J.T. Walsh (“Sling Blade”). Its main title design won the Emmy award and its pilot screenplay received a Writers Guild nomination. The Syfy Channel aired the entire series multiple times. Since 2010 there's been a Facebook page where thousands of fans from many different countries push Sony for a TV revival.

And yet here we are. A film in the same genre as our work is being promoted right now using the same exact title as our work. Most Hollywood businesses legitimately consider creative and artistic interests and rights in these cases. This one seems to have slipped through the cracks of acceptability.

Supporters of the creative rights of writers should ask Dimension Films to let their film stand on its own merits and call it by a different title. "Dark Skies" is taken.

Join the Dark Skies Resistance @ Facebook

See the Dark Skies Playlist @ YouTube

Read more about Dark Skies @ AfterDisclosure.com

‪Get the original, classic and definitive Dark Skies Series @ Amazon

Dark Skies @ IMDB

WGA (Writers Guild of America) Credit, 1996
“Dark Skies” | Created by Bryce Zabel & Brent V. Friedman

Hill abduction case headed for silver screen

Silver Screen Saucers

The 1961 Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction case - perhaps the most significant abduction case on record - is being developed as a feature film entitled Shades of Gray. The main brain behind the film - Hollywood producer and author, Bryce Zabel - announced the project yesterday and revealed that the film is to be based on the popular 2007 book Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience, by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden.

Over at his After Disclosure web site, Zabel writes:

“I'm pleased to announce, in time for the 50th anniversary, that my production company, Stellar Productions, has optioned the film rights to Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience (New Page Books) by Stanton T. Friedman, MSc. and Kathleen Marden. Friedman, of course, is the leading scientific ufologist of our time and a former nuclear physicist, the man who broke the Roswell case. Marden is Betty Hill's niece and the trustee of her estate. I'm thrilled to be in business with them in bringing this profound and unsettling case to what we all hope will be its largest audience yet.”

Zabel acknowledges that his won’t be the first feature-length screen rendering of the Hill abduction case - the 1966 book, The Interrupted Journey was adapted as a TV movie in 1975 - but states confidently that his adaptation of Captured! will be “the most definitive book film/combo that has come to the screen.”

Zabel’s fascination with the Hill case was first shared publicly in 1996 in the pilot episode for his UFO-themed NBC TV series, Dark Skies, in which the Hill characters make a brief but very notable appearance (see below).

Zabel writes of Shades of Gray: “This will not be an easy process, getting such a controversial book made into a film, but difficult or not, it starts now.”

For more information on Shades of Gray and the Hill abduction case, head on over to After Disclosure.

Dark Skies on DVD

Created by Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman, the UFO-themed TV series Dark Skies was first broadcast by NBC in 1996 only to be cancelled the following year, placing it in the good company of innumerable challenging TV shows to have been shoved unceremoniously by cigar-chomping corporate executives into the televisual memory hole.

Great news, then (for those of you that didn't know already) that Dark Skies has finally come to DVD. Both slickly entertaining and UFOlogically fascinating, the series will resonate with casual fans of the sci-fi genre and seasoned UFO researchers alike.

For much more information about Dark Skies, including where you can purchase the series, head on over to Bryce Zabel and Richard Dolan's website, After Disclosure.


For the Dark Skies DVD trailer, see here.