Darkening Sky

I've seen movie with worse production, but The Darkening Sky does have a decidedly low budget feel to it. Eric Rainer is a student who enjoys studying UFOs and people who claim to have been abducted but does not believe in it himself. When his girlfriend disappears he meets Beth (played by the super hot Danielle Keaton)who's boyfriend recently also disappeared.

There are some minor spooky parts with a little bit of unexpected events, but overall the movie is predictable and doesn't really bring anything new to the table in this genre.Fans of alien abduction type movies will probably enjoy it regardless.

I'm a complete and utter sucker for these types of movies which (without delving into spoilers) not only play with a paranormal/supernatural concept in such a way as to be explained by something mundane, but also leave the mystery intact by not fully explaining everything to us, and framing the story in such a way that it could easily be either one or the other.

This film has a bit of a goofy start, very plainly obviously low budget and some of the acting drops to some questionable quality. This is not the major problem, but the style of the film doesn't do much to try to overcome this low-budget feel, and so a lot depends on the viewer being able to latch on to the characters, Eric and Beth, to navigate them through the early parts of the film which play coy with the concept ---- Eric is studying "modern mythology" and leans heavily towards being a skeptic with regards to alien abductions, and has to be dragged into that realm of possibility in more and more convenient ways.

The film has something of a twist ending, but the best part about it is that the twist ending isn't something that comes out of seemingly nowhere or requires you to have been taking notes all throughout the film; the inevitability of it is very slowly and gradually brought up all throughout the last 30-40 minutes of it.

Even the most casual of viewer can start to pick upon the idea that a whole lot of the conflict and conversation, even down to mundane events like Eric's former professor paying him a visit the day after a call in which he expressed interest in returning to school to work on his doctorate, starts to become more and more easily ascribed to paranoia rather than aliens.

and yet when the ending hits, it does so in a way which does not nail down one resolution over another, but instead escalates the conflict in a much more complicated way, in which it becomes even less clear what the truth really is, not because the case for either explanation is flimsy, but because the seed of doubt can completely break down either one.

Let me start off by saying I have seen many awful movies on this subject. This one was pretty good and deserved a better rating. It held my attention, piqued my interest, and had an interesting twist at the end.

Is it about an alien abduction? Eric Rainer seems to think so. He has flashbacks of strange events which start off when he was a little boy, and have haunted him throughout his life. He's been collecting 'evidence' to try and put the pieces of this mystery together. His girlfriend Cindy thinks it is nonsense and is ready to leave him, until the night she disappears.

Eric hooks up with the new neighbor's niece, Beth, who is also looking for her BF who mysteriously disappeared; and together they try to find out the truth about the aliens.

I don't want to give too much away, so I'll stop here. Watch and enjoy the movie, so we can discuss the ending on the boards......

A combination of science fiction and supernatural ideas. Alien abduction versus dreams. The gorgeous actress Danielle Keaton reminds me so much of the character, Death in The Sandman comic books written by Neil Gaiman. As a matter of fact her character name in the movie is, Beth. Same exact look and hairstyle.

I just finished watching this and I honestly feel that it deserves a higher rating than it's current 4.3. I mean, MOST films rated that low here are SERIOUSLY horrible! But, I really enjoyed it and even though it was rather simple and clearly very low budget, still, I felt that they did a very good job not only in keeping one's interest but also in actually building some suspense as the story progresses.

At first, I didn't really care for the main guy very much; but, as the story continued without giving too much away, I could see some logic in why he came across that way (heh... is that vague enough...?) As I usually mention in my reviews here, COMPARATIVELY, as far as the general competence, writing, direction, and particularly the acting, which is the usual weakness with lower budget films, I truly felt that they did a good job in putting across a good story with some good Thriller aspects and a good ending. I think the narration was a nice touch, especially considering the direction that the movie took ultimately. And even though the visual effects were pretty simple, they did well with what they had to work with. Some of the camera work / editing were done obviously to mask the low cost of the film and to simplify what normally might be a difficult 'action' scene; but again, all things considered, I felt that they did a good job.

The overall true theme and direction of the film has certainly been done many, MANY times before. For me personally, again without giving too much away, I usually do not find this specific kind of story very satisfying because it indeed HAS been So overdone in recent years. So, the fact that it falls within that general category and I still enjoyed it, says a lot, at least from me. With the exception of a few films that do this well (and NO, I am not gonna ruin it by naming them : ) I normally find the way that this type of film is handled usually comes across as rather clichéd with the ending being sort of a cop-out to explain things. In this film they do it MUCH better than usual, although I do believe this is the first film that I have seen this done where the story has been based upon an Alien / Abduction type sub-theme. I also REALLY liked that the ending was done in such a way as to leave you a perfectly balanced choice as to what was really going on... (thus the refreshing lack of it 'necessarily' having the usual obvious, cop-out ending)

So, FOR WHAT IT IS and as I have said almost in EVERY review that I have written here, compared to the literal TSUNAMI of crap that passes for entertainment these days, I am inclined to give a little low budget film like this a lot of slack where many others will simply dismiss it, as long as it is executed well, the actors don't drive me up the wall, the script is competent, and ABOVE ALL... a decent mood is set. Oh, btw, I really did like the sound design and I felt that it really added to the effectiveness of the film and made up quite a bit for it's low cost. I REALLY liked the closing song; I wish that it had lasted longer before they faded in the harder theme.

Overall I definitely give it a 6-7; certainly more than it is rated here...