Friday 12 November 2010

Skyline review

Skyline (15/PG-13, 92 mins)
Directors: Colin Strause, Greg Strause
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

A bastard mash-up of Independence Day, Cloverfield and War of the Worlds, Skyline begins as a number of what appear to be bright blue meteors crash into the streets of Los Angeles in the middle of the night, waking up our main characters.

This is actually a flash-forward and we go back to earlier that day to find out a bit more about them: there’s Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and his pregnant girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson) who’ve just arrived in LA to visit Terry (Scrubs’ Donald Faison) and stay at his fancy apartment, along with another pair of young ladies who remain largely anonymous.

Formalities over, we get back to where we came in, as they look out to see a giant alien craft that has opened up over the city and is lifting thousands of people into it, while smaller ships go from building to building hoovering up the stragglers. And then there are the aliens themselves to contend with....

Though far from a disaster, and not without its fun moments, Skyline is a bit if a waste of time. The biggest problem is that the whole thing is entirely absent of context, variety or nuance. There’s an attack, they run, someone might die, then they squabble some, followed by an attack by a slightly different beastie, then they squabble some more and run some more.

With its modest budget, the action is confined almost entirely to the apartment building and its immediate surroundings, which just adds to the sense of repetition and staleness. And while the visual effects sometimes really hit the spot, occasionally they're as sketchy as hell.

It’s also not in the least bit shy about pilfering from its forebears, so look out for the dogfight from ID4, the invasive tentacles and semi-organic stylings of WOTW, and any number of checkpoints from The Fly to The Matrix.

Throw in dull characters, a risible epilogue, a good deal of smell the fart acting and a score straight from Star Trek: TNG and you’d probably be as well giving an alien invasion movie from your DVD collection a spin instead.

9 comments:

  1. I just don't understand how this movie got made.

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  2. Technically competent; performances competent; plot really lame, characterizations cliched; A rather pointless exercise in exploiting special effects; the ending was a visceral descent into a slimefest of impossible resolution.

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  3. Put it in plain old English. This movie sucked

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  4. i really enjoyed this movie. a lot of people come expecting things out of movies but i surely was entertained throughout the movie because i don't expect anything and can enjoy movies for what they are. yeah, the dialogue and acting at the beginning sucked, but the whole concept of the alien attack and their power was awesome. this is a movie for open eyes and not jaded ones because people with jaded eyes just like to compare, so the review basically was biased and missed the point. nice try. maybe next time you can write a better review.

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  5. This movie was all about the aliens... The humans were thoroughly unlikeable, clearly the brothers Strauss are more into sci-fi than human drama.

    And that's okay with me... refreshingly there was no cliched "humanity will rise to the occasion" or "so long as you are virtuous and have courage you will triumph" plot... Frankly, in the face of a real alien invasion, humanity would not stand a chance...

    I feel therefore Skyline is much better science fiction than most of its contemporaries, I enjoyed it greatly, but it is not a movie for people who want to care about the characters involved.

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  6. to all the haters go watch a romantic dramedy you silly sycophants. Your all just scared shitless someone's going to acuse you of not having good taste or being shallow. This movie was a milestone for film makers. Not since terminator has money been used so wisely to make a production. I agree the plot was scat but it had the proper intro, rising action, climax and was well-paced. I honestly don't know why these people still go to action movies. If you can't think of a single action movie that you like STOP WATCHING THEM and save us the grief.

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  7. The movie wasn't that bad, yeah the ending sucked, they're just forcing you to watch part 2. If you like action, a bit of horror & dark humor you should read my novel, Immortal Implements:

    www.immortalimplements.com

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