What actually happens
The kitchen has been rearranged overnight
The Barretts live on a quiet suburban street: Lacy, a real estate agent who supports the family while her husband Daniel is out of work, and their sons Jesse and Sammy, who talk to each other from their beds on walkie-talkies. Then strange things start happening. The kitchen's contents are found rearranged into odd patterns overnight. The house alarm goes off after detecting every entry point breached at once. Sammy has a fit at the park, and Lacy watches hundreds of birds fly into the house.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
Someone is standing over the bed
One night Lacy wakes to a noise from Sammy's room and sees a figure standing over his bed, but when she turns on the light the room is empty. Sammy is later found walking away from the house with no memory of leaving it. Lacy, Daniel and Jesse each go through catatonic episodes and come out of them with no memory of what happened. At a pool party it turns out Sammy has marks on his body. Jesse has an episode in the woods and ends up in the hospital, where doctors find geometric shapes on his body and call Child Protective Services.
Security cameras, now with answers
Lacy searches online for explanations and finds articles about UFOs and alien abduction. Daniel puts up security cameras, and when he goes through a night of footage frame by frame, it shows three dark figures standing over the family's beds. They consult an expert named Edwin Pollard, who refers to the beings as the Greys. He tells them that many families have been through the same thing, usually ending with a child taken. The Greys tend to take the person they showed interest in first, he says, and he thinks that is Sammy, so the family should protect him. Daniel buys a shotgun and Lacy gets a guard dog. On the Fourth of July the family boards up the windows and the front door, then eats dinner while Daniel puts a fireworks show on the TV and remembers happier times.
Fireworks on television, static in the house
This is the stretch people dread, so here it is in order. The TV fills with static and the lights flicker, and the dog barks hard at one of the boarded windows. Daniel orders Lacy and the boys up to Jesse's room and stays downstairs with the shotgun. A bright light shines through the window. Lacy tells the boys not to open the door. She hears the TV in her bedroom turn on, walks toward it and gets trapped in the room. Daniel leaves the dog downstairs and brings the boys into his bedroom, where they barricade the door and huddle together. The dog whimpers and goes silent, and it is not seen again. The TV flickers and the beings appear in the room. Jesse blacks out and hallucinates his father's suicide beside his mother's body. He sees Sammy and chases him, then comes to in the upstairs hallway, where the Greys appear and vanishes along with them in a burst of light.
The ending, explained
Three months after the siege, Lacy and Daniel have moved to an apartment, and they are suspects in Jesse's disappearance. Pollard cuts out a newspaper article about Jesse and pins it up with other photographs of missing children. Going through old boxes, Lacy finds pictures Jesse drew as a child, showing the Greys around him, and understands too late that they chose Jesse first, not Sammy. A walkie-talkie crackles nearby, and both parents hear a faint voice that is Jesse's, calling out for Sammy. Jesse is gone, and the dog was never seen again.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed whether there's a scene after the credits.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: not fine, and it happens off-screen.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Dark Skies scary?
Yes, Dark Skies is a 5 out of 10. It is a slow suburban haunting with a medium dread level, jump scares, and very little gore.
How does Dark Skies end?
The Greys take Jesse after the family barricades itself in a bedroom on the Fourth of July. Three months later, Lacy realizes they chose Jesse all along, and she and Daniel hear his voice on a walkie-talkie.
Does the dog die in Dark Skies?
Yes, the dog dies in Dark Skies. Daniel leaves it downstairs during the final siege, and it is heard whimpering and then goes silent. It is not seen again, so the death is implied and happens off-screen.
Is there a post-credits scene in Dark Skies?
Nobody has confirmed whether Dark Skies has a scene after the credits.
Who are the Greys in Dark Skies?
The Greys are the extraterrestrial beings that visit the Barrett family at night, according to the specialist Edwin Pollard. In Dark Skies they take children, and they take Jesse.
