Dark Skies

Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton play financially stretched, stressed-out parents of two boys in this suburbia-set horror film from Legion director Scott Stewart. What else can go wrong for the pair? Try mysteriously vanishing photographs, a plague of apparently suicidal birds, and the dire warnings of J.K. Simmons, who turns up two-thirds of the way through the movie to fully explain what is going on to the couple — and to those handful of viewers dim enough not to have already figured things out. Indeed, while there are some scares along the way, Stewart foolishly gives away the whole kit and caboodle plot-wise with an opening quotation from Arthur C. Clarke. Sci-fi and horror fans know to keep watching the skies — but they won’t be missing too much if they decide to skip this. B-