Somewhere in the Skies - SOMEWHERE IN THE DARK SKIES with Andrew Sanford

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

On episode 155 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Andrew Sanford returns to review the 2013 horror/sci-fi film, DARK SKIES. As the Barrett family's peaceful suburban life is rocked by an escalating series of disturbing events, they come to learn that a terrifying and deadly force is after them, one which may have arrived from beyond the stars. This polarizing film draws on decades of authentic alien abduction cases and research, mashing it in to a smorgasbord of paranormal, supernatural, and ufological goodness and badness. Ryan and Andrew navigate their way through its dark and sometimes laughably absurd plot points, making for a very fun and very opinionated journey. Go watch the film, come back, and enjoy this epic movie review, somewhere in the dark skies! Guest Bio: Andrew Sanford is a Writer/Performer operating out of NYC. He was a featured writer for the ABC New Talent Showcase in 2014 and 2016 and a quarter finalist in the 2019 Screencraft Horror Screenplay competition. Andrew also hosts the long running comedy podcast Half White Son of a Black Man and was a guest cohost on the Season Finale of Mysteries Decoded on the CW. Follow Andrew's podcast on Instagram by CLICKING HERE UPDATE: The 2020 Contact in the Desert Conference has been postponed per COVID-19 guidelines. To learn more, visit: www.contactinthedesert.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Watch Mysteries Decoded for free at www.CWseed.com SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is edited by Jane Palomera Moore Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This message brought to you by the National Association of Broadcasters and this station. Hey guys, Ryan here. And before we get to this week's episode, I have to warn you, it's going to be a movie review episode. I'm joined by my good friend and fellow Mysteries Decoded co-star, Andrew Sanford. And we're going to be discussing the 2013 sci-fi horror film, Dark Skies. So, if you haven't seen the film, press pause on this episode, and go watch. It's available on iTunes, Voodoo, Hulu Live TV, and Amazon. Give it a watch, and then come back for our very spoiler. heavy review in great, probably too much painful detail. But hey, it was a lot of fun, and it is also

a super fun movie, and we had a blast reviewing it. And if you're self-quarantine like we are, it's a good way to pass the time and stay connected with people. So, I hope you enjoy our review as we venture bravely, somewhere in the dark skies. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan's Fred. Welcome to a very special episode. I am titling Somewhere in the dark skies. That's right. Today, we are going to be reviewing the movie Dark Skies with my good friend, fellow podcaster, crypto-zoologist in all around, just amazing guy, Andrew Sanford. How's it going, buddy? Hi, Ryan. I'm great, man. I don't know why I was, hi, Ryan. I'm excited to talk to another human being who isn't my poor, poor wife, who's been

just trapped in here with me. Yeah. For those you don't know, we are in lockdown here in New York city, so we are not allowed to really leave our apartments. You know, it's not as Thunderdome-esque as people think, but we definitely, it's an interesting energy right now. I don't know about you here in Queens. It's silent. I mean, you can hear the train going by, obviously, everyone again. But, yeah, how are things up in Manhattan?

It's interesting. And I'm in the Washington Heights area. We're actually fairly close to a hospital, so we do hear sirens. pretty often, but it's police cars, it's fire trucks. It's everything. But we, it is pretty dead and also like not as dead as I would like it to be. Like we still, like there's still people, my wife and I, we went for a walk. God, this was last week at this point. That shows the most recent time I went for like a full walk was almost a week ago. That's like I saw the sky. Yeah, right. Well, I've been trying to go up to my roof on a

I'm lucky enough that my apartment building has like a roof that I can access fairly easily. So I ate ramen up there the other day just to break the monotony. Good change. But I, yeah, exactly. And I, uh, we went for a walk and there were just people, this is probably the day before we got the shelter in place order, which for those who don't know, it's basically saying that you don't leave your apartment or your home, except for things that you absolutely need to do, which is to, you. If you want to exercise, like going for a run, it's fine. And things like that, they just want you to stay away from people. And if you need to go to the grocery store, obviously.

Like, the next morning, I actually went to the grocery store at 7 a.m. when it opened just so I could avoid being around other people, which I know people usually get up at like 630 and stuff like that. It's been my clock is all over the place right now. So it was a challenge. But it was worth being in a fairly empty grocery store. But we go for this walk. And there are people at the park near us playing volleyball on this court. And so they're literally passing around something that they're all touching at the same time.

And then lined up on the side as if waiting to play are like 10 to 12 people. Not exaggerating shoulder to shoulder. Just standing there waiting to play. So you see some of that stuff. I wish you could see me shaking my head right now. Bro, it is very frustrating. But it's one of those things where you, like, it's, unfortunately, it just is what it is. And there is a reason we have been called the epicenter of all this.

Let's just put it that way. But I do not envy you because apparently Queens is getting at the hardest. So please stay safe. It's been a red zone here, which is a little scary. But, you know, I'm doing the same thing, man. I haven't left the apartment in two days. Yeah. And I will only go out to get groceries or to, you know, walk around the block a few times.

just like you said, right, the monotony, get some whatever fresh air of New York City has ever had. And it's the same here, man. You walk by areas that people usually congregate and there are still people out there. I just don't get it. And these are the people traveling and spreading it to other places. So New York City, stop being dumb, stopping stubborn New Yorkers and just stay in place. That's all I could say to any of my New York people out there. Yeah, and I know it's hard, too, but it's just something that we got to, it's only going to get harder if it has to go into August and September and things like that.

We're looking at like a maybe, maybe some sort of normalcy in July unless certain people force us to open up ahead of time, but we don't need to get into that right now. But if at best case scenario, I think we're looking at maybe close to end of July, hopefully for things to return to some sense. of normalcy. Yeah, maybe the cure I've been working on with vanilla extract and cocoa butter and flour will work. It tastes great. I don't think it's going to cure anything, but I'm doing my best. Oh, good, man. At worst, you've got the trappings of some good chocolate chip cookies going. Oh, that's what it is. Just a load people full of sugar and flour. Well, before we get to the movie we're going to be talking about, Andrew, I've been seeing you posting a lot about this phenomenon that's going around Netflix right now that I have not checked out. And I got to ask him, what is Tiger King and why should I watch it?

Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, there is a gentleman by the name of Joe Exotic. And I remember hearing about him for the first time on an episode of last week tonight. back in 2016 when he was going on a certain political run. I don't want to spoil anything, but this man was an attempted politician. He was also, he owns what he claims to be the largest tiger zoo in North America or possibly the world in Oklahoma. And he is very flamboyant, proudly so. has a big old mustache, a mullet, wears fancy clothes, fanciful anyway. And he is, this isn't too much of a spoiler, he is currently in prison.

And I originally heard about him about a little over a year ago. There was a podcast called Over My Dead Body, which is a great podcast who did a special on this man on Joe Exotic series, which I think they have since taken down, which is smart, because I think they're like re-releasing it. to just capitalize on the fame that this documentary is brought on. But there's a documentary series currently on Netflix, seven episodes long, fascinating watch, incredibly trashy,

incredibly crazy, and something that you literally, like you can't turn away from. And it's got hills and valleys. And I will say, if people can try to relisten to the podcast, there's elements of the podcast that I liked a lot more. But to see these people and also some other people,

people that they introduce into the story as part of all this is it's fascinating and it was for those of you who have watched it um my wife and i when we finished the series she is just this wonderful hilarious and supportive person and she was like we should dress you up like joe exotic and take some pictures she's like because you got a wig i got i got some shirts and i was like oh absolutely and she's like yeah maybe we can do that tomorrow i was like no we should do it like right like right now like literally we finished the last episode and went and snap some pictures which are currently on my Twitter at Sanford minus Sun or on my on her Instagram joy dot Mayweather there's like you can find them you can track them down oh yeah I'm looking at it right now on your Instagram right they're

incredible man I have no words she she's a genius she is better than my better half and it's something that like she had the idea and I thought it would just be kind of fun I was like yeah, I'll throw the wig on. She's like, no, we got to tie it back. So it looks like a mullet. We got to do this. We got to do that. She taped little safety pins to my ears to make them look like earrings.

Like she went the whole night. She's a wonderful person. We've got a budding costume designer in the making. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, I'm definitely going to check it out. It's next on my list. There's so much time to finally consume more than we could ever possibly consume.

But, um, looking forward to it. But, um, getting back to your podcast. Now, you are a master of horror review podcasting. You do a month of this every, every, uh, October. Can you tell us a little about what shot toper is? Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so my podcast, Half White Son of a Black Man is usually, uh, a, uh, we take an improv spin to the news of the week. me and my three main hosts who are currently mcale page, Aaron Leash Moire, and Jamie Lamchick, three very funny people. We sit down. We take some news items from the week. I throw some negative stories at them. They got to spin them to me in the positive, or I give them just a headline, and they got to fill out like the story for me on the spot. And or, no, and or, and it doesn't matter. We do like a top three, which is like a listical type thing, where we do our top three favorite things in a certain topic.

We are on a smidge of a hiatus right now because it's hard to get us all in the same room, which is how I like to do the podcast with my wonderful engineer Gage, engineer and producer. But every show October, every October, I completely throw the purpose of the podcast out the window

and we talk about horror movies. This year in particular, Mikhail and Jamie, and this was before Jamie joined as a full-time host, came on and we're on almost every episode. They had to watch several, some very scary, some not so great horror movies, and then sit down and talk to me about them, and they are not big horror movie watchers themselves. I think the most horror movies Mikhail has watched has been doing the podcast. Back through the years, the podcast is over five years old at this point.

That has been my favorite part of doing the show. And if we go back, we've got episodes with you that are fantastic. and we used to do where it would be like we talked about three episodes, three movies and episode. You actually have, you and Nick Westermeyer, another good friend of ours, have the record for there was one episode where we talked about six movies.

Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I must have blacked that one out of my memory. Yeah, that's fair. Well, we were drinking while we did that one. I remember that pretty specific. Oh, okay, yes. Yes, it started to come back.

in the office of one of my old um one of the places i used to work we sat down and we talked about a movie and it's remake so it was like the fly and the remake of the fly night of the demons and the remake of night of the demons and um invaders from mars and the remake of invaders from mars i can't believe i remember all of those that was amazing man yeah some of those i wish i blacked out four years ago oh brother y'all if right now night of the demons is currently on and Amazon, I believe. It is not a good movie, but it is, can I swear on the show? Absolutely.

It is batshit crazy, that movie. So if y'all want something that it's just going to be so insane that it takes your mind off of things and you're currently social distancing, go on Amazon Prime, or just try to, I'm sure there's an easy way to find it. Find Night of the Demons. I believe it's 1988. It tries to be tongue-in-cheek, and it just does not work. I absolutely love horror movies I love horror it's my favorite genre good bad scary not so scary

like it's sometimes the worst the better for me like I just was watching child play three with my morning coffee yesterday just because um and so it's it's something that I love and I love seeing horror movies that I've never seen before I love when something like really really scares me

most recently I watched the autopsy of Jane Doe which I had never seen. And it's currently on Netflix. That's one you should definitely check out, even though I, oh, what's his name? It's got Brian Cox and a dude who I try not to support too much. He was Speed Razor. We just won't say his name.

It'll be easier that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll look into the dude who played Speed Racer in the live action with Kowski's movie and look into some shit that he did back in 2015 and you'll understand why I don't want to give him too many props. But wonderful movies. movie really, really scary. And it's, I love when I feel like I'm at a movie's mercy, where, and more often than not horror movies are the movies that will catch me off guard

and will make me not sure what's going to happen next. And I love that feeling. It's like, it's the, the purple dragon that I chase to just keep finding movies where I'm not only scared, but just unsure of what to expect. Well, we're going to, we're going to find out if you're at the mercy of dark skies today. So a little run down here. We've got the 2013 horror sci-fi movie Dark Skies, directed by Scott Stewart, who also directed... Written and directed.

And written. I'm sorry. I forgot that. He also did Legion and Priest. Have you seen either of those movies? I've seen Legion. You know what? I like Legion.

Legion's a crazy movie. Yeah, from what I remember. And it got a TV show spinoff too on sci-fi for a while. I think it only lasted a season. I love, I have a soft spot for, A, horror adventure movies. Like horror things that try to, it's like, oh, it's horror, but it's also got this big, like, lineage and, like, lore and stuff like that. And Legion checks off a lot of those boxes. It's also a fun bottle movie.

Yeah. Because it all takes place in that diner. Did you see what his earlier career stuff included? You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed.

Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. I mean, some television and special effects, but no, what am I missing? Well, yeah, he was a visual effects artist, apparently, or a visual effects person. And one of his first movies he worked on was Mars Atex. Really?

Yep. He worked on Superman Returns, Sin City. And at least according to his Wikipedia page, the last visual effect movie he did visual effects on, strictly as visual effects person, was the first Iron Man movie. Wow. So he is, yeah, so this dude is a part of cinematic history. Wow. for better or worse, I'm sure he was able to just write his own ticket after that. Because you see after Ironman, within the couple of years, he gets to just start directing his own movies. Yeah, he gets to make that jump.

He's the next Tekevati, for sure. Or the first Tekevati, yeah. I mean, he's had a long career. Well, this movie was produced by Jason Blum, Blumhouse Productions, and Dimension. I forgot that. Yeah, it's got the Weinsteens in there, too. Ooh, okay, we won't go there. We're going to forget that part of that.

Yeah, yeah. Who do we have? Yeah, Carrie Russell, who was just on Broadway, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Stewart, and holy shit, J.K. Simmons. So that's what we got to look forward to. But I got to ask before, I was wondering if you could give us the official synopsis, Andrew,

but have you ever seen... Oh, I would love to. Have you seen the movie before? I am not. I just locked it this morning, actually. Oh, awesome. Okay, so it's nice of first. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes, it is. Yep. I had not seen it before. I think I had heard of it. I remember, I feel like I remember when it came out, but I just, yeah, I never saw it. All right. Well, good. This will be fun then.

So, yeah, if you don't mind, can you give us the official IMDB synopsis for dark skies? Sure. As the Barrett family's peaceful suburban life is rocked by an escalating series of disturbing events, they come to learn that a terrifying and deadly force is after them, one which may have arrived from beyond the... the stars. Beautifully done. I couldn't have put it in my myself. I've been doing a lot of cold reading

about my social distancing as well. So it's, yeah, you got to keep that muscle warm. You really do. You do. Well, I want to bring this up before we even get into sort of our review and kind of, we're going to do kind of a play-by-play of the movie if anyone hasn't

seen it. If anyone hasn't, I definitely recommend stopping this episode now. Go watch. Then come back. This is going to be full of spoilers, obviously. But this is interesting. A lot of people get confused because there was also a television series in the mid-90s with the same title, Dark Skies, and it also was about aliens. And I've actually had the creator and writer of Dark Skies, the television series on the podcast many times. That's awesome. He's a colleague, a friend, and for a while, he protested this movie

because he believed that they intentionally lifted the title after someone saw the show or, uh, was connected to the show, but either way. You know what? What's that guy's name? What's his name? If you don't mind me asking, then he did the TV show. Bryce Sable.

Bryce Sable. I think Bryce might be on to something. Because my first question after finishing the movie is what does the title have to do with the movie we saw? Like, does it have a deeper lineage in UFO stories or things like that that I'm not aware of? Or is it strictly just the only other connection you can make is to a TV show in the 9-4? that was about UFOs. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything UFO related. See, yeah.

Like, then I'm the, I think Bryce might be on to something. Because not only do we, whenever it's nighttime, we primarily see inside the house, there's like one moment where we see a guy looking out into a quote-unquote dark sky. But there is nothing that's right. Yeah, I don't get it. So, you know, Bryce is pretty bitter. He's probably not happy. I'm reviewing this movie.

But that's going to depend on the review. view to be completely honest. Yeah, yeah, listen, Bryce, I'm just going to say I am on Bryce's side. Me too. I've never met the man. Sounds like a real smart guy. It was a brilliant series. Definitely check it out if you can, man. It only lasted one season, but it's some of the best historical preserved television I've seen in a while. You know, it aired in the 90s, but it took place in like the 60s and 70s, and it's just beautiful to look at. So yeah, check it out if he can. Okay.

Okay. So we open in the movie Dark Skies with an Arthur C. Clark quote. And this is one of my favorite quotes. It's two possibilities exist. Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally as terrifying. I love that quote too. I think I've brought that quote up on this podcast.

I think you have, yeah. It's one of my pickup lines. Yeah. As long as my girlfriend does it say that. Right, of course, of course. Yeah, so as soon as I saw that, I'm like, okay, I'm down with this. They looked at some good inspirational sci-fi writers of the time. So let's run through our characters quick.

We've got Daniel, who's a dad, Lacey is the mom, Jesse is an older brother, and Sammy is a younger brother. So we've got pretty small family here. Right. A pretty standard suburban fare. They live in like a nice, quiet little suburb as the breakdown suggests. They've got their nice dynamics. There seems to be some worry in the family of where the next paycheck's going to come from, which was odd.

But that's, yeah, we get a pretty standard family dynamic in this movie. Typical white suburban family at their finest. You know, the brothers get along really well. they have this really strong bond. They talk to one another at night over walkie-talkies and from across their bedrooms, which we'll get to. This plays a big part in the movie. But then you have sort of this deterioration of the parents who are kind of falling apart, you know.

Right. The dad's unemployed. The mom is carrying the family. He just can't find work. He's insecure. So you start to see the family isn't exactly as perfect as we would like to think. Right. Yeah.

And it's started. very much like, I was like, huh, this is an interesting way to start this movie with just this very, like, a little bit more contained family drama, where it's just like, oh, you know, it's a suburban family, but not everything's as good as they'd like it to appear. And the son isn't listening to them, or the older son, Jesse, isn't listening to them very much. It seems like he has a hard time fitting in. But, yeah, there's this dynamic between the parents where they're freaked out because the dad's unemployed.

I think there's one point where the the mom is trying, Carrie Russell's trying to work on something and the dad's like, come on, put it away. And she's like, no, we need this. Because she's a real estate agent. So it's like it's quick to establish that everything is not happy at home already. Exactly, exactly.

And then on top of this, we start to get these weird things happening in the home. And it kind of starts with what they think was like someone, burglarized their house while they were home. You know, they wake up and the refrigerator's open. Everything's all over the place. So, and there were a lot of

no, and a lot of eaten eaten watermelons and apparently they think it's an animal, but she's like, what kind of animal comes in just to eat the lettuce and doesn't eat the meat? So my question, right off the bat,

Ryan, is there some kind of UFO story to attach to this where aliens are vegetarians because it seems like they just eat the fruit and the romaine lettuce or whatever you know I mean

in all of my research I have never come across definitive proof that they're vegetarian but interesting look at it this way I mean if a lot of people believe that these gray aliens are actually us from the future they are a

either evolved or devolved version of us coming back to look at like, oh, how were we at this point in time? Where did we go wrong? Or where did we go right? So maybe these aliens are so evolved and enlightened that they realize they no longer

have to eat meat, you know? Interesting. Okay. Maybe something like that. But no, there's no specific lore in terms of that. There were such strong decisions made in this movie quite a few of them that I feel like didn't pay off wholly

and trying to fill out what these aliens were like like that was one of them I was like why bring up the fact that they don't eat meat like it seemed like just such an odd specific to not have like pay off later on you know what I mean right there were a few moments in this film where that definitely happened where you're like why like why was that even in there but um right yeah yeah yeah yeah to me it seems like uh Stuart the writer he kind of looked at the

surface level phenomenon when it comes to aliens and UFO encounters or alien abductions and just lifted some first sentences and like threw it all into one family's experience. That's what I'm Yes. Yeah. No,

I would agree with that 100%. And there's elements, this nag is because you have some of those elements that are very surface level, And then some of the family drama that comes across very surface level as well, at least in the sense that like, I thought it was kind of interesting where they're literally like, we can't pay for our security system, even though this is happening right now, which don't get me wrong. Still kind of a champagne problem kind of thing. But it was interesting to me where I was like, wow, this is, you know, they're struggling and they can't do something that would take care of them in this moment.

They have to sacrifice something else to make that happen. And, you know, he goes to a job interview that doesn't work out well. But they still don't seem as stressed out by that. Yeah. It's like the movie, the movie is constantly juggling being two different things. Right. Where it's like, oh, it seems like they're stressed out by money, but really they're stressed out by aliens. Really, they're stressed out by money.

Really, they're stressed out by alien. Like, it just keeps kind of bouncing back and forth. I never felt like it comfortably got its footing in either side. for me personally. It seems like two almost cliche stories being mixed together. And while I enjoy the performances, I think the actors did a really good job. It does come across a little less than genuine to me. But that being said, once we get to sort of the paranormal aspects of this,

this is like straight up poltergeist. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. you know, Stranger things is known for doing things like that. And one of the first ones, besides the, you know, the breaking in at the home,

you mentioned the alarm system. This one, this was interesting. So their alarm system goes off. They call the place up and, um, the woman says, it looks like it was tripped somehow,

but it's all eight alarms in all eight points of entry in your home. So that, that gave me chills when I first heard that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

cool. And it's, like, it was a good example of like, oh, we don't know what is doing this or how it's doing it. And the idea that you keep having the police officer being like, you're sure it's not your kids, or you're sure it's not your kids, you're sure it's not your kids, right? And I was just like, I was like, bro, I, you could not have a more dismissive police officer. Oh, I know. just there to be dismissive and then leave makes his partner wait outside which i thought was funny right when clearly something's going on yeah something's going on like and it's there were a lot of elements kind of thrown in in the first act that i was like ha this could maybe pay off later and then some that were thrown in that were specifically set up to pay off later in a way

that you would have not expected or seen coven we don't have to get into that right at this moment. Yeah. But when you have stuff at the beginning with the son, Jesse, and his awful, terrible, stereotypical, I'm going to use the word wigger, even though I hate that term. Um, a kid, like, gangster friend who's just, um, they call him rats. The dad calls him rat face.

Um, like, it's just this, like shitty friend that he has, that he is, unquestionably. and for some reason just straight and loyal to. Right, right. And, you know, they sort of go into it saying, you know, the son, Jesse, he's a little younger. So he's kind of like, he's in that age where he's starting to mature. He's got a crush on a girl. And he's trying, you know, there's one point when him and the friend, I don't even have his friend's name written down.

You said rat. We'll call him rat. Yeah, it's like something rats nerd is his last name. It's like, yeah, I forget what the first name is. They call him rats. Yeah. So there's one point where they're watching a porn together. And this is like, you know, the kid, Jesse, he's trying to see how to become, you know, the next level of a teenager, I think.

And this person he's chosen to sort of emulate is the last person he should ever be emulating. He's a complete sociopath. Yes. This is funny. So the second sort of, or maybe third, I don't know, at this point, there's so many. sort of paranormal-esque moments in the film is Carrie Russell, the wife is at home, and she's looking out the window,

and then a bird crashes into the window, and then another, and then another, and then another. And literally hundreds and hundreds of birds start just, basically dive bombing into their home, all dying and just, it's complete pandemonium. It's very unsettling. What did you think of that scene? I liked that too. It was again, it was something that felt familiar to me. You know what I mean?

And again, it is it is kind of that successful version of like an homage type of a thing. It's like it's almost becomes clear than like, oh, this is an otherworldly situation. Even if it's not aliens, even if it's something supernatural, what have you. There's something going on that's being implied when a bunch of birds start. flying at one direction like they trying to get through it almost um and again i thought like carrie russell's the goat man so she like she plays it off very well and reacts in a way that makes you feel scared for her and i i found that i again that moment i found as well to be very effective in what it was trying to do which was to show that like something weird is going on here what that is we don't we may or may not ever really get an answer to. But at the time, it's to kind of throw these people into hysterics.

I liked the randomness of what was going on, the fact that they couldn't really nail it down to one specific incident. Because I believe the next thing that happens is the dad takes the kids to the park or takes Sammy to the park, the youngest one. And this is some things I understand. Maybe they made certain choices. Maybe the actor was trying to convey some. something that they couldn't get across.

Because Josh Hamilton is another guy, the dad, he's a Broadway after. He's done a lot of movies. He's done a lot of TV. Dude knows what he's doing. But there's a moment where Sammy starts screaming. Like he looks off, opens his mouth, and starts screaming and can't stop screaming. And this is, I think, one of the next paranormal. It either happens right before the birds or it happens after the birds.

He starts screaming and the dad is just yelling at him to stop. in a way that seems like he's almost met. He's like, Sammy, stop. Stop. Sammy, stop. And I was like, bro, you're not concerned right now? Your kid just pissed his pants in public and started screaming. Yes, that's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, it was just one of those moments. And maybe they could have, we see later on, that it's hinted that the dead may or may not be abusive. Or like, at least that's what people, like, it almost seems like the things doing this are trying to, make people believe that he's abusive for some reason, or at least that's

the misconception that happens, so it could be planting the seeds for that, but I really doubt it. To me, it just struck me as a very odd choice. One thing I also love is it's hard to make movies in general. Making a movie

is very hard, and getting it to come out good is even harder, but there are little things that are just speed bumps along the way. and one of them, for me at least, was her search, search. When she goes to search what's going on to her, and it looks like a Google page, but instead of Google, it says search in big letters. And I was like, oh, boy, guys, you didn't need to show us that page.

It's just one of those weird things. It's like, listen, nobody's got Google money. I get it. But you don't have to, you ain't got to show me that she's, Like, just, she's clicking on the computer. Next thing you know, she's on a page that is what it is. I don't know. Yeah.

Very strange. I mean, a lot of horror movies do this where they, oh, yeah. They, uh, they do a search for, um, you know, the most random shit out there. Oh, yeah. My son is, uh, talking in a voice of a 45-year-old man. And then the immediate response is, oh, he's possessed, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's tough, too, because I feel. like, you know, back in the day, in the 70s and 80s and 90s, maybe 60, like, it hasn't been until this like last decade, like in the mid-200, like, once we get into 2007, 2008, you can't really send a character to the library anymore. Yeah. You know what I mean? You can't send them to another location to look something up. It would, A, it would probably be costly. B, it's a little unrealistic because libraries aren't as important as they used to be anymore.

But C, it's really just nobody would do that. But unfortunately, the alternative is, at least to me, not as interesting. Like, especially because we live in a world where anybody can put whatever the hell they want on the internet. I'm not saying libraries are like the end-all, be-all source of information. but when you have a character that's just clickety, clack, clack, clack on a keyboard, it's hard for it to come across as scary to me. Well, let's get to sort of beyond these little teasing things that whatever lay behind this is doing. There's another interesting one where all the photos in the frames in the house just disappeared.

That was really interesting. I'd never really seen anything like that done before. yes and I also feel like possibly it is playing into the big twist at the end of the movie whether or not that twist is clear we'll get into later but that was something

there's always fun to be had when you have a twist at the movie in a movie towards the end and then you look back or think about the movie afterwards and go like oh man this happened that kind of relates to that this happened this happened sometimes that can be done really strongly.

I do not feel it was done as strongly in this. And I do believe that that was to set up the twist at the end. I could be wrong. It could have just been like, oh, here's another random weird thing that happened. Right. But I do think part of it was that to set up the twist. Again, if anything, the twist made it less effective. Because in the moment, I was like, oh, weird, they just took all their pictures.

like that's creepy like it's it's a weird thing and it's a weird way to mess with people that was another effective moment i also thought the we see carrie russell um well a one of the time she's trying to sell the house she talks to this mother and the mother says that her kid gets sick a lot the kid almost has an asthma attack in one of the weirdest adr moments that i've seen in the movie that girl was not made that girl was not making that noise they were clearly like we'll just throw it in post put it in post but she She tells the mother like, oh, you know, we find out that Jesse was sick a lot when he was little constantly. Like he was allergic to the world, she says.

And the mother is like, oh, how'd you get through it? Carrie Russell basically convinces this woman not to buy the house because it won't be good for her. So it's a nice little, like, moment to show us that, like, Carrie Russell gives a shit about people. Later on, she's showing the same house to somebody. And we start to get into some of the even creepier moments. And I like this a lot because she just all of a sudden starts twitching and losing it and then she walks towards this glass door in the back of the house

and starts banging her head against it until it breaks. Hey, y'all, Ryan Spreck here. As you all know, the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is always free to consume. But it isn't free to create. That's why I've started the Somewhere in the Sky's Patreon campaign. On a monthly basis, you give what you think the show is worth. you'll be helping the show continue, grow, and to be something truly communal.

And remember, there are rewards for each level of contribution, and the list is only growing. So please help Somewhere in the Skies now by becoming a patron. To contribute and to learn more, visit www.patriot.com backslash Somewhere Skies. Thank you for your support. And now on with the show. Yeah, it was very unsettling to watch. I thought that moment when she just, like, like, it was like a flip got switched in her head, and she just, like, was immediately just

frozen and had, like, almost like a stroke in that moment. And it was, it was very, there are, there's imagery in this movie and visuals that just go beyond giving me the creeps, and they made me so uncomfortable. So, you know, kudos for that, no matter what people end up thinking of the movie, there were some really effective moments, I think, and that was definitely one of them. Yeah, and I appreciated that she does that and then wakes up in her bed thinking it's a dream. And then it's the call from her boss that's just like, why did you start having a nervous breakdown in that building in that the house that you're showing this morning? Right. And she sees that it's like three in the afternoon.

So it actually happened. But she woke up like it was a dream. Like it was just a fun, like it was a great way to show how much they're losing control and what's happening. In my opinion, that was one of the most effective moments. moments of the movie. Yep. And it sort of spirals from there. Each member of the family starts to sort of have these moments where they seem controlled by something in unknown force. You know, the dad, Carrie Russell, goes outside and finds him frozen in place outside. And when she, you know, it's one of these, these typical horror moments where you can't see the person, they have their

back to you. And then when she goes around, his mouth is just wide and gape. And he's, He's frozen. And then his nose just starts pouring blood out. And then he just runs back inside, like, really quickly as if controlled by something. Again, these moments were some of the best in the movie, I think, where the director was like, I know what I'm doing here. I definitely know how to do horror. Now, how is it going to connect to aliens? That's a question we'll get to.

But, yeah, that was one. And then each of the suns had those moments, too. You know, the youngest son pees his pants, starts screaming. Jesse is just got his first kiss, you know, and then he has... Yeah, after he awkwardly, and again, this might be to, like, lead into towards the twist, but because of the porn he was watching, he just reaches out and touches this girl, calls this girl bad girl and touches her boob, and then she's, like, furious, understandably so. And then it's like, God, have you ever even kissed a girl, like, just mad?

And he's like, well, it makes it clear that he hasn't. And she's like, aw, well, in that case, It's just like, well, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how this works. Show a little bit more self-worth. This kid's creep. But he gets, like, chased when he's right, because it gets, and that's what I love, like, I was, I wasn't, like, a sheltered kid, but I was definitely, like, somebody that I didn't smoke pot or anything like that until I left to go to,

quote-unquote college. But I, like, to see a kid that's, like, 13 years old that this kid's friend pull out, like, a bong, and a huge bag of weed and just be like, yeah, let's rock, man. I was just like, what is this? Oh, we have to go back. And, you know, since we're talking about the friend, during this scene where the birds all crash into the house,

you know, like the people show up who deal with like outbreaks or whatever. Yeah, I think it's the EPA, right? There we go, the EPA. And that's a good question. We'll have to look that. Yeah. We'll fix it in post.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, listen, if I learned, I hope not, because if I learned anything from Ghostbusters, it's the EPA or the bad guys. Yeah. Okay, so we need to. Always the bad guys. Always the bad. We, after the bird thing happens, we find out it was three different migrations of birds that crashed into the home. And they think maybe this could be some sort of weird airborne virus, not to get too current. Right.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The friend has a line right here, and I got to read it, that is so timely. He says, bitch, you're going to get quarantined. And that would be the, I think the first of five times he says, bitch, throughout this movie. That was kind of his only thing he had going for him. Yeah, no, they really like, in a movie full of characters that felt like they were, like, somewhat fully defined, like, and really, like, at least moderately fleshed out. The parents felt very fleshed out to me. Jesse was what he was, but again, that might have been intentional.

Sammy was your classic little kid. That kid, I was just like, man, I always say to my friend, to Mikhail, my friend and co-host on my show. Hollywood has no shortage of shitty 10 to 13-year-old kids that had red-haired freckles. And this kid is no different. I don't know what it is. It's like they got a factory that just spits them out. But it'll look over the last like 30 years and you will just find kids that are from even I would say 8 to 13 redhead and freckles and they are always the worst. It's just always make these kids shitty.

And this one wasn't even in like a fun way. I think you said it the best. He's a sociopath. Yeah, he's horrible. He's absolutely horrible. Like if the aliens, if this movie is about aliens, which we'll get to wanted to take someone, that's the person you take to find out. what not to become. Yeah.

Because then we see him shooting poor Jesse with an aerosol gut rifle. What the hell? It's funny. Yeah, and then Jesse starts floating in the because whatever.

It's at this point that the movie really started to go off the rails for me. Okay. Because this happens moments later, Jesse he's like, what, he's my friend. He's my best friend because then the dad goes over and tries to beat up the rafts, like the kid. And I was like, okay, that seems like a jump.

And then rightfully so gets punched in the face by the dad, and that's all that comes of it. And then, if I remember correctly, order-wise, moments later, the dad has a successful job interview and gets a new job. So all of a sudden, all the family problems are thrown out the window. Yeah. Like just gone. Yeah, that's a good point.

I actually have that written down. There's a moment where he gets a job, and he's so happy. He goes home. And then we get, like, the most tame sex scene ever in cinema history. But it's like... Oh, you know what? I might not have gotten that because I watched the version I watched was on Hulu Live, and it's the sci-fi, the version that they show on TV.

I saw no sex scene, at least from my recollection. When I'm saying, too, I'm talking, like, they kiss, and then you hear a little, like, what, sort of... Oh, gotcha. Okay, no, I saw that. Okay. Yeah, fair enough.

No, you didn't miss anything. But you're right. They sort of, all this, like, crazy, scary, weird shit has happened. And then it's all just forgotten for one night. Yeah. Yeah, things are okay in our regular lives. But now we've got to deal with this other shit.

Which, it seemed like an odd choice. Like, if you're trying to reach a sense of calamity, that they're shooting for at the end of the movie, I feel like you don't dismiss the real problems so easily and so readily. They're just like, all right, we got all that human stuff out of the way, and now let's get into the alien invasion. And it's just like, oh, but why?

So what was that stuff for? What do we go through all that for? Exactly, yeah. Well, we'll get to that. But I do want to mention to Daniel the dad, he is, you know, he's really trying to not believe that any of this stuff is paranormal or weird or unexplained. And he even ends up getting security cameras installed.

I don't know how that happens if, you know, they have no money. But he gets these installed to look in every room. And this is where one of the first kind of big, I guess, alien abduction tropes comes in. He's looking at these videos and they all go static for a moment. And there's a half an hour missing on the videos. Now, this is a very... common occurrence in alien abduction that we call missing time. So yeah, what did you think of that moment?

That was another one where I was just like, at that point, it was almost a little too late for me. Like, I felt like that should have happened a little bit earlier on. At that point, I was like, I was like, all right, clearly something weird is going on here. I forgot that they even had the security cameras. Speaking of weird, that was a lot of cameras. It was like eight camera screens. Oh, yeah. That's a lot of cameras.

It's just set up in your house when you can't afford the security system to begin with. I know. It's like straight up Walmart or something. Yeah, exactly. Sitting there like Ozzymandias. But he's, that one, like, while it was, like, fun, and I hate to compare things to other movies, but that was a moment where I was like, I've seen this done better. It felt less like an homage. I say what you will about the movie.

There is a moment in the M. Knight Shama. movie signs where you have the alien reveal or the alien caught on footage reveal and it walks across the screen and kind of looks almost like Bigfoot like walks across the screen at this like birthday party and just

looks dead at the camera and it's like this very unsettling like whoa this like pop moment and in this at that point like because it's so blurry and he's literally just seeing this blur like it's like

him realize that moment feels like it's for the audience when we already know that there's been somebody else in the house like i feel like we had already even seen one of them at that point like because the kid sees one or something or carrie russell thinks she sees one in the kids room or something like that like yeah exactly so we already know we had that moment and yet it lingers on there like that's information that we need but we know that already it's fun and again, he's playing it up as best as he can, but it's, as far as moving that plot line forward, I was like, we already, like, we know this. Yeah.

We got it. I get that. From a structural standpoint, I think, yeah, it was a little too late. Someone like me, who's knee-deep in abduction lore, like, it was our moment of like, oh, good, they got something right. Like, missing time is a huge part of all this. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there are ways that they could have shown, like, the,

missing time element almost at least for me gets lost and though like oh yeah half hour went past but what you really want to know is like look there's something standing in his house at like eight different points right and i was just like well no the missing time is the interesting part like at this point that's a good point um because i do agree that that's interesting and that's it's cool to like i was wondering how many if you had to say uh like in a percentage between zero and 100%. What percentage of the alien stuff that happens in this movie is based on things that have happened in real life? Almost all of it.

Really? 100%. The problem, though, is that it's all happening to one family. I'm talking like decades and decades of small, subtle things happening to quote-unquote experiencers. And it's always like one of these. elements or maybe to. Again, this is where I think the writer just looked at all the bullet points of alien abduction and said, I'm putting them all in one movie on like, you know, maximum drive.

Yes, I mean, it's crazy. We have the markings behind Daniel the dad's ear that he finds and then these weird geometric shaped wounds on one of the kids. Now, yeah, these are actual, these come from actual accounts of people and I've seen them. I've seen implant incisions, and I've seen markings on people's bodies that are perfect triangles or, you know, octagons or almost like crop circles dug into a freaking person's skin. It's very unsettling. Whether or not it came from an alien or an alien abduction was involved, it's fascinating that the human body could create something like that, or if a

human being self-inflicted themselves in that way, too. Right. Yeah, and I guess that leads to the point, too, which is because they spread themselves so thin with all these different, like, ooh, this kid's got bruises. This guy's got a thing behind his ear. There's birds. There's all that. When you get to the climax, there's nothing for them to really hang their hat on, like, because they go so many different directions that it's hard for that to, like, focus at the end. I think now it would be as good a time as that to talk about when they try to go and get some advice about all. about all this and we get our sweet J.K. Simmons scene who I just have to assume is good friends

with Jason Bloom to some extent because they did Bloom House did do Whiplash. Okay, okay, that makes sense. Which was, yeah, which was his big one of the biggest movies. He's like, I can't remember if he won an Oscar for that. He at the very least got nominated.

Wow. That was one of J.K. Simmons' career roles So I'm sure Jason Bloom was like, listen, man, you come in, we give you this much money, you just score. Sit there. And then you go home. Yeah. So, I mean, okay, so he is, I guess basically, the family sort of accepted at this point that there is definitely something going on. And because of Kerry Russell's Google searches or search searches, as it were, she comes to the conclusion that it's alien abduction.

and the husband finally is like, all right, I'll entertain this. I can't deny what I've seen and experienced. So they go to enlist the help of Mr. Pollard, J.K. Simmons himself, Mr. J. Jonah Jameson and the Spider-Man movies. Yeah. Remembers that. And this is like where we start to get the really big history of the grays, as we call them, the alien. Well, he gives three different explanations.

Yes, he did. I thought that was again speaks to the movie and how scattered it is. Because he's like, oh, they're graze, insectoids, or reptilians? There's three basic. Now, my first question would be, are those these three basic things that go on, or did he just pick like, okay, we got graze? I need two other examples because we got rule of threes. We'll go with exceptoids and reptilians.

It was interesting the three he chose. I mean, I've heard accounts of every kind of race of alien you can possibly think of. So why they chose three that almost all looks similar to one another was interesting and interesting choice. Maybe they were the most effective. So, you know, I don't know. I really feel like the reptilian one was thrown in because Jason Bloom is very left-leaning, very liberal. And it will often take shots at right-wing people in his movies, at least far right-wing people. that's what we have that dad at the random dad at the beginning who was talking about um he's like you want to hear two scary things china and iraq or something or china and iran or something like that he's like oh yeah like so they make him look like a crazy person and then with the reptilians they say like he's like reptilians are the ones i the least believe i least believe because uh it seemed like he was saying that because uh if correct me if i'm wrong a lot of

lot of the reptilian things has a very like anti-semitic base. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that feel like him felt like him taking a shot at another fringe belief. Interesting. Yeah.

Just because, yeah, yeah. And then we get into the, my next question would be, have you ever used anything akin to this UFO test that J.K. sent him test. Oh my God. So this, these, these do exist.

I mean, a famed... They do, really. There's a famed UFO abduction researcher named Bud Hopkins. He passed away not too long ago, but I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people would come to this guy. He lived in Manhattan, and they sought him out. He would hear out their stories and, you know, record it, and he started to compile, like, a list of, like, questions to ask if you think you're abducted by aliens. So, I mean, yeah, it makes sense. If you're going to compile stories, it's the same with you. You UFO reports. If you go to the mutual UFO network and report a UFO, there's like strict guidelines. Like, what time a day was it? You know, how big was the object in terms of, in relation to the

distance you were? How many lights? And then you literally just tick off the boxes. And then the investigators decide if it's worth going out to pursue or not. So when he did that, it seemed a little dumb at first. But then the more I thought about it, I'm like, no, that's what you would do to try to we, as he says, weed out the crazies. I think he's, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I will say, I thought, I was like, my first thought was, you know what? I thought this is real.

It is. It seems so on the nose, like so on the nose that I was just like, you know what? I bet you there was somebody who did this. So, yeah, good. I was right. Yeah, you were right. Another thing I wanted to add, which I thought really warmed my heart was the state of Mr. Pollard's

apartment. It is like littered from wall to wall with UFO photos and the strings connecting the, like every conspiracy tinfoil hat person's dream. And seeing it somewhere else besides my own apartment really put it into perspective for me

to be completely honest. So recently I've let my girlfriend start to redecorate our place so that people will actually come over. So yeah, that was cool. I'm like, okay. So this is what happens when you get too obsessed with this stuff.

Good to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I will say before we move on from him, I do want to say, I have lived in quite a few apartment buildings in New York City since I've lived here. Some big, some not so big. Some, like, seven floors high, some, like three floors high. I have never been in an apartment building.

that was as noisy as his building. When they are standing outside of his door to go into his apartment, when they meet him there, he comes back to the grocery store. And there's just this ambient chatter going on and throughout the building. And it was such an odd choice to me.

It was almost like he lives in a hospital or a school and maybe I miss something and he does. But it was like, it felt like he lived in a building that was just buzzing with people out. of their apartments talking to each other and walking the halls. Who does that? I couldn't even tell you what my neighbors look like.

I mean, I never see them. Nobody ever interacts, you know? That's a good point. I didn't think about that. So strange. That is really strange. Okay, so Daniel and what's her name? Lacey, they sit down with him.

He starts going through the list of like, I'm going to see if you guys are actually abducted. And the more he takes things off, the more he realizes, and they realize, yeah, like, this is what he thinks is going on. And he decides it's the grays, which is the most common alien in abduction lore. Everyone knows, you know, gray body, big black eyes, skinny body as well. Yeah, very, very iconic. And it was interesting to hear him describe, like, what they do and their place in all of this. I thought that was creative.

They're almost like these, the worker bees, I guess, of the alien races. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I liked the whole, like, they're like, well, why did he choose us? They choose us, and he's like, they're fucking fine now, man. Yeah, that's a good point. He was like, really, there's no rhyme or reason to it. Right, because, you know, a lot of these people who are abducted, they say, like, oh, I was chosen for a reason, or I was special. there was something unique about me they wanted to experiment with and this Mr. Pollard tells them straight up there is nothing special about you people like they take who they want when they want but again almost all of that is done away with the twist at the end yeah we're getting so close and I know the people listen are like just get to the fucking twist we will we will get there we will get there as fast as the movie decided to get there what was the other thing

Oh, he found... This is where we kind of seat back into the relationships between the family. He tells them, you can't stop this from happening, but your best defense is to stay unified. They use fear, and that's how they take one of you. They clearly want one of the people from your family, and they're going to fuck with you until they get the person they want. So don't be scared. Don't give into that and stay unified. So now we have the family having to sort of...

They've gone through all this crazy. traumatic, weird stuff. Now they've got to be a family again. So this is kind of, as we're inching towards, I guess, the climax of the film. It's now the 4th of July. At this point, Daniel, he has

boarded up the house. He buys a guard. Which I really don't get. From him being able to see clearly that these things just appeared in his house instantaneously, like, I don't understand why he put the boards on the windows but then I don't think the movie understands as well you know what I mean yeah that's a

really good point and he gets a shotgun and I'm like I was like okay I kind of get this and then they go and get a dog yeah like an attack dog and I'm like okay it's very primal I feel like we've resorted back to like yeah you remember remember that time I told you about the the Hopkinsville goblin's case with the you know the floating alien goblins and the family was shooting at him and they terrorize this family. Like, there was a lot of callbacks to that in this movie, especially in the last scene, where I think the movie signs also got a lot of its inspiration as well.

This remote area where a family is being hunted or terrorized by these aliens. Now, in this movie, it's not a remote area. They live literally within feet of other people. And that's my next question for you, Andrew. So it's the 4th of July. There's clearly people outside doing fireworks and everything. And then you have this family hold up in their house, waiting for a pending, like, alien invasion of sorts.

So, I mean, the juxtaposition there is interesting, but I don't think it was well thought out either. No, I feel like it was just a lot of the stuff in the last, like, 20, 15 minutes felt like it was like, all right, we are just going to barrel through to make this ending as explosive as possible. Here's all these set pieces. Here's a shotgun. Here's a loud dog.

here's boards that can be stripped off the walls and have the screws come out and stuff like that. Here it's 4th of July, so we can have fireworks going off. It felt like they were like, we need to make this finale bombastic. There's not a lot of substance, but at the same time, I will admit, I did fall victim to it. Like, my heart was pounding in these last few minutes because you're right. They throw everything at you. It's clear the family cannot stop this force coming into their house. Why they didn't just go outside where there's a lot of.

other people, I don't know. Again, this idea of isolating themselves seems like the worst thing they could have done in this situation. But again, then we wouldn't get to the climax that we have if they had done that. And again, we're sort of

at the writer's disposal at this point, I would say. Yes. And because we've gotten no clear idea of what these aliens are doing, though, it seems odd that the families like, well, we need to do this, this, and this,

and that's exactly what'll help. Like, oh, hide it. She tosses the little kids in their room at one point, which apparently doesn't matter, because moments later, when they're given back to her, she's, like, ecstatic. And it's like, I thought you wanted them to hide in her room. There's one moment that really, I thought, was fun and well done,

which is that she's walking down the hallway when, like, shit's hitting the fan, the aliens are showed. There's lights outside, I guess. again things that no one else is seeing for some reason in a very populated suburban area and it's 4th of July so it's not like people are probably like awake or asleep yet because this happens over like dinner time she throws the kids in a room while the dad's downstairs with the dog and the shotgun

and she's walking down the hall and we see one of these grays behind her so one's already in the house and it just follows her reaches towards her, almost touches her, and then pulls back for no reason. That was weird, yeah. It's not even like she sees it or like it becomes aware to its presence. It's like, oh, no. Like, well, why, like, what, what are we doing here?

Why, if it was so easy for them to do what they eventually end up doing, why didn't they just do it? Like, it's this weird idea. Because we never get a clear definition or a, a clear answer, even a simple answer, as to what these aliens are doing, their motives and their actions make no sense. Yeah, I would have to agree.

It's messy. I mean, he says, they're like, oh, he says that they use fear to pick on them, but, you know, the things that they do, like, all they do is, like, slam a door closed and lock her in a room, which is, like, they're freaking her out, but she's not the one that they eventually take.

They're breaking into the house downstairs, but then we find out that the dead is eventually fine. Yeah. Like, he runs upstairs, like, nothing happened. Well, let's get to who they want to take. Now, this is where it just kind of goes completely in overdrive. Bananas, man. The aliens start to close in on the family.

We see, like, a shit ton of them. Like, I guess a gaggle of grays, we'll call them in the home. Love it. Love that. You like that. I'm going to copyright that. Gaggle a graze, man. Gaggle of grays, up in this bitch.

That's the next somewhere in the shot. It's guys T-shirt. Gaggle of grays. I'm doing it. Done. So, okay, let's go back to these aliens use fear. So we think they're possibly going to take Sammy, the youngest kid. That seems to be where the movie was heading this whole time.

Yes. Youngest kid is the most vulnerable, and let's do it. Let's take them. And as the family is fending off the aliens, Jesse gets transported to some weird nightmare, I guess, where his mom is dead. His dad kills himself. It's very, um, Emmy to horror almost. Yes, yeah, and it's insinuated that the dad killed the mom.

And it was honestly for a moment, because when he, when the, the pliboards came down and he fired the shotgun, I was like, ooh, I hope he shot somebody that's not an alien. Yeah, that would have been a really interesting. choice. If they're if they're just doing it like the Twilight Zone set the scene for a lot of stories to come from American pop culture and cinema and writings and literature and what have you. The monsters are due on Maple Street is one of my favorites which is a Twilight Zone episode where they it's a similar

thing where these people like something shoots across the sky and all the power in the street goes out and all the people that live on street start blaming each other. And eventually somebody gets killed by accident that they sent off to like investigate the next block. And then it turns out that it was literally just these aliens going like, oh, like, you know, we shut off their power and look what they did do each other. Let's move on to the next block.

Like it's a similar idea of like these aliens using fear to just observe the human race. And this feels like, felt like it was going in that direction. But then everything has kind of a simple answer. Like, I guess he shot at nothing, and he just went upstairs. And the kids were in their room, but then they're out of their room because they're just okay. And then this kid sees what we thought might be, like, the things going awry, to put it mildly. And then it just ends up being, yeah, like a nightmare, I guess. It's some weird nightmare.

So, yeah, he, mom's dead. Dad kills himself. Sammy's running around the home, clearly, like, possessed. and then he sees the girl he kissed with his friend. They're watching the porn that they watched in the beginning of the movie. It was so weird. And it, you know, like, okay, we have all these images of what could be or what has happened mixed together. And Jesse is just having this really strange, strange nightmare.

Or is it real? We don't know. And then the moment he sort of snaps out of it, we see him separated from the family. They're all staring at him. and this is the moment where you're like, oh my God, this was like, was it or was it not? Maybe their plan all along. They finally got the fear induced into this kid so much that he's lost in another world. And they use that to take him.

Yeah. And then we see that like the next thing that happens is we see J.K. Simmons' character reading a paper just so they can throw him in there one more time. And it says he cut out an article that says like, oh, parents blamed for a child. Disappearance and then he puts it up on his wall of stuff But then it goes three months later and it seems like there were no repercussions from that at all Right we get like one off line of the dad being like The child protective services are stopping by today or something it's like oh okay yeah So there was no investigation

Into like what and guess what bro if they're coming by they're gonna take your kid because you've got a bunch of crazy shit pinned up on your walls. Like, they, I feel like they were going for fun, like, oh, now the parents are going to be our like J.K. Simmons character. And because they were affected by this, they want to start looking at all the details and looking at all these different stories. And they've got their own map and pinups and stuff like that. But it doesn't really add to anything.

Yeah. Because we don't really see. They seem fine. Yeah. Like, I know it's three months later, but they still seem like they've recovered pretty well. And they have an incredibly recent picture of Jesse hung up in their house. That looks like it was taken on a cell phone, but it's a huge picture. And then we go from that to her going.

Now, like a running thing that we see earlier on is that Sammy is doing drawings of himself, holding the hands of a tall, thin man, a gray, presumably. So here we have Carrie Russell going through Jesse's old box of stuff and she finds pictures of him when he was younger and then she finds similar drawings that he had done

when he was a little kid. And then she starts going back and having these flashbacks to the conversation that she had with the mom about Jesse being sick when he was little and baby being allergic to this world. and oh, there was something else that's brought up where they, and I could be wrong about this.

And I will say that this was a twist that I found hard to interpret that either he had been targeted his whole life or Jesse is not human. Yeah. So this is where I too, I'm like, what the fuck? I don't get, are we supposed to know the answer or not? Because it was not clear in,

any way, shape, or form. And all. And then when I started to look back, I was like, I think it's airing on the side of him not being human, because most of the stuff about his character is him adjusting to being a teenager, but you could just have that be interpreted as him adjusting to being a human being. A human being. And the, oh, he was allergic to the world line. I was like, oh, so is he not from this world? Right. Like, that seems like a specific. line to bring back. It's a little too on the mark.

Yeah. And then we get this last little tag with the Sammy's walkie-talkie going off. And I guess it's apparently Jesse. Communicating back to him. Yeah. So then I'm just like, okay. And then it just ends. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, we are left with the question, was Jesse an alien? Were they coming back to get him? Or was he some sort of, uh, a lot of research done in the abduction realm where people believe they're taken and either from men sperm is taken or women, their eggs, and they're creating these alien human hybrid programs where they want to see how we mix with one another. Or was he, you know, an alien put into a human body to learn how to become a human? Like who, it's, it's too much and it's too big for

this movie, to be honest. Yes. Oh, big time. Why they decided to do this twist at the end, I don't know. I'm going with, he was the target all along, and we're just not supposed to know that. And maybe he had, like, premonitions this was going to happen. Or it's not the first time he's ever been taken. This just is the, like, the final time maybe. I don't know. Right. Yeah. And I do, like, not to get too much into, like, my own conspiracy theories, but, If you look back, the Weinstein's are notorious for going in and changing movies as they are being made. Sometimes for the better. They made a lot of, like the Dimension Films and the Weinstein Company made a lot of great movies. But most of the time, it's for the worst. And that especially happens in horror movies.

They think they know what they're doing with horror movies, and they always like to add stupid, shlocky things to try to make you, like a mass appeal. I know this was several years later, but it felt very like paranormal activity twist to me. Like, I feel like they were just like, oh, no, we need to make the twist that he was an alien the whole time

or something like that. I really have a hard time believing that that was part of the movie to begin with. Like so much so that if you were to tell me that they finished filming the movie, the last scene was going to be J.K. Simmons adding them to his wall. I literally thought the movie was

about to end. I was like, okay, that's like, at least an ambiguous ending and you don't really know what happened and you know probably the parents got in trouble for what happened or got blamed. But instead, they like doubled down and try to give an extra explanation in a scene that seems very thrown together as if to just give like a, ooh, like a big twist scare at the end. And it's just, it is just not effective. It's not. It just, it didn't work. I just, I thought overall, like, I appreciated trying to make a alien abduction horror movie. Yeah. Oh, there's a lot of,

there's a lot to work with there. And I think they had some of those elements in there. Like, it's, A, you're feeding on a fear that some people actually have. It's just like making a horror movie out of a possession story. Like, there's, there are things people, everybody, for the, A lot of people have a friend who knows a friend who was abducted or has a friend who knows a friend who knows somebody who was possessed. Like there's a lot, that's a deep well to draw from. And I think that they probably had the best intentions.

But because I feel like I would be very surprised to hear that this director and writer is a UFO person. If you were to tell me like, oh, this guy actually. knows a lot about UFOs and UFO phenomena, I would be surprised because like you said, it's really more of a smorgish board of things. Like he went in, took like one sentence and then it was just like, well, I'm going to throw this in because that's kind of cool. Like it doesn't seem to have very much an understanding or a really firm grasp on the stories it's trying to draw from.

You know what I mean? Oh, totally. Yeah. Again, I just feel like Stuart, he, he, he, he, skimmed the very, the first search result he found on alien abduction and just went with it. Yeah. You know, and he did. He took every trope, whether abduction or paranormal, he mashed him together.

He threw everything into the movie. And it was contrived. But overall, man, I mean, I thought it was well written in terms of, like, the dialogue. And it had a good build, mostly up to the climax. It looked great. It looked good. It was very slick, and it had a style. The acting was good.

I thought all the people did a really good job. Pretty tremendous. You got like the main, I always love when you, like, A, the main actors were fantastic, and you even get somebody like J.K. Simmons come in and giving it very reserved and grounded performance. I feel like any other movie, and usually any other actor would take that opportunity to be like,

all right, here's the crazy that believes in everything. And instead you get this guy who's like almost like weary and burdened by the information that he has, which I really liked. Like he's just like, yeah, sorry, this is this is probably what it is. I've seen this before. Look, I got this behind my, like he's got this horrendous scar behind his ear. Like there's instead of being like, ooh, like he's just very, very grounded. And I think that is a testament to the director and the style. that he was going for and the act like the kind of acting choices that he was trying to stick with from

his from his actors and i yeah i agree like there is a lot of those decisions were very strong it's just the story itself was just kind of a little all over the place towards the end um well let's look at the rotten tomato score for this movie we've got a 41% by critics and a 49% by audience so oh wow say what you may um about the movie, well, personally, Andrew, out of a rating system of grays, what do you give this movie out of one to five grays? One to five grays? I would give it probably two grays.

I really, I would want to give it more, but there's so much about a movie. The hardest part of any storytelling is sticking the landing and hitting the ending, and you want all these elements to try to pull together to make a cohesive story that becomes as satisfying at the end as it may have been at the beginning. And don't get me wrong, that is not easy. It's not an easy thing to do. But when you have a movie where you sit there and you get invested and I really was like I was on board until we got into the third act. And then I started to be like, wait, what movie is this? Like what's happening here?

And because the elements leading up to it were so scattered, it not only had a hard time bringing things together, the ending made some of the elements that we had experienced before worse, in my opinion. Yeah. Like, and not as satisfying. The ending, the ending of this movie, I think, did it a great disservice. Joy, my wife came out into the living room at one point when I was watching it. We were towards the end.

And I remember her being out there. And at one point, she heard me, I forget what the moment was, but I audibly started laughing. Oh, yeah, exactly. Like, and it's, and that's, listen, again, I don't want to, like, disparage anybody on this particular movie. I usually have no problem taking shots every now and then. I really think that there are a lot of elements in this movie that just got out of people's hands, maybe. And who knows, I wasn't there. And I've never made a movie.

of like a big budget like you know this movie costs like 15 million dollars to make or something like that it's not an easy feat to accomplish but there's when you have this story it felt like the whole story they could have taken like another pass at the script before they started shooting you know what i mean like just something to really bring everything that it's like just to take some element maybe even if the birds came back maybe if we got even just got like some more explanation as to what was going on But it felt like they left things purposely vague so they could just go bug nuts at the end. I knew we could use the word bug nuts at some point in this. I always try. I always try. Well, that's, you know, you had a good. What about you? What about you?

One to five grades. Yeah, me. I'm going with, I'm going to go with a three grays out of five on this one. It was enjoyable, suspenseful, a couple good jumps, but it was like you said it was pretty cliche and it relied heavily on all the films that came before it

I think but overall I definitely I'd recommend this to people just looking for a fun scary alien film yeah oh man you know something to watch on like a Saturday afternoon that's like my it even it warmed my heart

that I like I have Hulu Live TV no big deal and it I was able to watch this because it's available on demand through Hulu Live TV through sci-fi. And while the sci-fi channel has become something markedly different than what it was when I was growing up, it was fun to, like, when I was in grade school and stuff like that, Saturday afternoons when I would have nothing to do,

put on sci-fi and they usually had on some cheesy, sometimes not so great, sometimes like cult favorite horror movies and stuff like that. So there was something a little bit like heartwarming about that to be able to sit down and watch a movie that I ended up thinking was so-so, but like a fun kind of cheesy horror movie. And it said sci-fi right in the bottom of the corner. And I was like, oh, you know what, this is nice.

This is like, you know, a nice little nostalgia punch. Absolutely, man. I mean, it brings me back to the days of like mystery science theater, 3,000 and watching that. Saturday and Sunday mornings. Like, I could definitely see this movie eventually making it to like riff tracks or something. Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't think it was that then. Not that, but no, no, no, it wasn't.

But I could see them finding a lot of fodder in there to deal with. I think when it comes down to it, when it comes to this movie called Dark Skies, I would suggest people go watch Dark Skies the television series. Boom. Or I had another guy on the show who, made this homemade it was literally the first

found footage film ever made long before Blair Witch and everything else that came before it was called incident sorry it was called McPherson tape and it was a home video of a family during Thanksgiving and their home gets invaded by aliens and they get abducted

a lot of elements go on YouTube McPherson tape type it in and then UPN actually remade it into their own version directed by the same guy, Dean Aliotto, he's a good friend of mine and UFO researcher and a filmmaker.

And he made, this is a funny story. I'll go through it quick, but he made this movie on like little to no money. He brought it to the distributor, and the distributor's place burnt down to the ground and they lost like the entire film. Somehow, somebody got hold

of it before this happened and it started making the rounds in the UFO community. Someone put it out there and said, this is an authentic home video of a family getting abducted by aliens. That's how convincing it was, dude. For like 20 years, this movie was going around

the conspiracy realms in the UFO community. Without this dude's knowledge? Yeah, he had no idea. He had absolutely no idea. Wow. And then somebody contacted him eventually and was like, hey man, that movie you made, like, it's huge. It's actually like a big thing in these niche communities of like

conspiracy nuts and UFO people. And he was like, oh my God, are you kidding me? He's like, well, I need them to know it's not real. So then he started going around and telling people. And then UPN remade it, literally a shot for shot remake of it with Dean Elliott directing it with like actual actors and stuff. Not to say the actors and the original weren't real actors. No, I do. You know what I mean. Sure, sure. Yeah, I know what you mean. I got you. And I remember seeing the UPN version on television when I was a kid

and it scared the living daylights out of me. And then I went and watched the original, which is even scarier, because it looks even more raw and real. So definitely I suggest people go check that out if you want like a good scary abduction. Have there been people in the UFO community

that have tried to say that he is just trying to cover up? What is a real home video? Oh, absolutely. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. It doesn't matter what he says or how, you know, I mean, I can literally, like, look at

the actor and point to them and put you, send you a link to his IMDB page. And he is still making movies today. So he did not get abducted by aliens. He's not missing. Amazing. It's amazing. But, you know, that's the lengths people will go to believe these things. And, uh, sure.

Yeah. I definitely suggest checking. that out too. But before we go, Andrew, I got to ask you, what do you got coming next? I know the podcast is on a little hiatus, but what comes next for you? And where can we find everything you're up to? You can find me. You can still, I post things on a half white son of a black man's Facebook page. I've been doing these, since I've been social distancing, I've been doing these cold reads. where like throughout the weekdays or as many days in a row as I can, I will cold read from something that I have in my house, basically,

or that I can find online. Like chapters from books. I was reading something the other day called Slash of the Titans, which is about the road to the Freddie versus Jason movie and all the different scripts and screenwriters that were involved in that. Oh, cool. Process. Great book to track down if you ever get the chance.

So I've been trying to move those over to the, Facebook page for Half White Sond of Black Man as well. I think you can probably like, if you search me, you should be able to find that on my Facebook because I think it's public right now. That might change at one point. We'll see what happens. Go on to my Instagram, Half White Sond of Black Man.

I recently put out a challenge for people, if you're a performer like myself, or even if you're not a performer and you're currently social distancing, I've been doing something called social distancing self-tape which is and that's the hashtag it's hashtag social distancing self-tape where people sit down and they self-tape themselves

doing a two to three-minute monologue just for fun just to get more art out there while all this is going on also there's things that are still coming down the pipeline but I wrote a comic book at one point that you can read on my website halfway cloned with blackman.com it was drawn by the great Joe Cabotete

one of my favorite people of all the time and yeah just go through the Half White Sun of that Black Man is on a hiatus, but definitely if you like this episode, go back and look at some of the Shocktobers, find the ones that Ryan has, I think Ryan's done one every year almost. There might have been like one year where I think you didn't do one, but I had like one year where I got married in October and there were few episodes that year. I know, right? The nerve. But there's, there's great episodes from that. That's something that I absolutely love. We've had some great people there. Or if you just

just want to listen to news from a time that was like happier, maybe even like two months ago. Just go and check out the website. I love it. Super proud of it. There's a lot of fun to be had from it. And just keep your eyes peeled. I'll pop up here and there. Check out my episode.

I was like you. I was on an episode of, well, you were on several, but I was on an episode of Mysteries Decoded. If you want to see me go Chase Bigfoot with a gentleman named Todd Standing. And I know a lot of people have different feelings about Todd, and I understand that. He actually has a nickname that I heard recently, which I was not aware of before. Can you share that on there? No. Okay, fair enough.

I don't want to, I don't want to just, even though he has gone to great lengths to talk shit about me since the episode has come out, I'm not going to sink to his level. We'll put it that way. But you should definitely watch that episode. It was a lot of fun. Love Jennifer Marshall, the host of that show. She's a badass. and it was a lot of fun to shoot regardless of the aftermath. Well, I got to, did you find Bigfoot?

Well, we'll leave that to the audience. Oh, you got to watch the episode. Got to watch the episode. Yeah, everyone can go and watch that at cwc.com. It's free to stream right now. Yeah, you can watch it for free. Yeah, man. Might as well with all this.

Yeah, and watch your episodes too. Yeah, exactly. Awesome, man. Well, I got to thank you for coming on today. Please be safe. Be healthy. And yeah, thanks for joining me again on Somewhere in the Dark Skies. It was my absolute pleasure, my brother.

Love to you and Jane, and please you stay safe as well. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with the Entertainment One Podcast Network. To learn more, visit Entertainment One Podcast.com. In reality, UFOs are seen by people from all walks of life every day all around the world. They've also been officially investigated by the U.S. government and by governments of several other countries, too. That's just a small element of what makes the...

a strange UFO topic so incredibly fascinating and fun to explore. That's what we do on the UFO podcast, Unknown. I'm Jason McClellan, and I invite you to explore the weird and wonderful world of UFOs with me and my friends and colleagues on Unknown. Unknown is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Iheart Radio, Spotify, and all the usual podcast places.