Culch.ie

Review – Skyline

Aliens land in Los Angeles, and begin sucking people into their ships via a very pretty blue light. Over the course of the first two days of the invasion, a group of people must find a way to survive.

There are some of us who appreciate a movie that’s so bad, it’s good. Roadhouse and M:I-2 are two so-bad-they’re-good movies that comes to mind. Unfortunately, Skyline does not fall into this category.

First of all, Skyline starts with a flashback. This could be just me, but flashbacks are now a little too reminiscent of the dreadful TV show The Event for this plot device to be absorbing. From here, the story goes from bad to worse as it follows every cliché in the book. Elaine (Scottie Thompson) is pregnant, her boyfriend Jared (Eric Balfour) is injured and hiding it, Terry (Donald Faison) is having an affair with his assistant and Candace (Brittany Daniel) smokes. So right from the beginning the audience is able to bank on who will live and who will die. And the sad thing is, they are not wrong. The characters are horrendously under developed to the point of being one dimensional and, as far as it is possible to tell, given no motivation by directors – the Brothers Strause – other than to look scared and run away. In this way, the audience is not given a character to identify with and are pretty much yearning for them all to die so the movie will finally end.

The main roles are played by Eric Balfour and Donald Faison – of 24 and Scrubs fame, respectively – and David Zayas (Sergeant Batista from Dexter) also makes an appearance. Sadly, none of these actors are able to replicate their TV performances and are given characters so dreadfully under developed that pinning a whole movie on them is far from justified.

We never find out why the aliens have come to earth, where they are from or what their agenda is, other than to suck the brains from innocent people and wreak havoc on Los Angeles.

The twist, such as it is, is boring, painful and uninspiring. By the time Jared and Elaine get sucked into the alien ship (and share a sneaky kiss along the way), the audience are just happy that the movie is nearly over. Elaine’s pregnancy is obviously designed to gain sympathy from the audience but this so clichéd, and has been done so many times, that it falls flat.

The special effects and CGI work well to begin with, but soon get stale and combined with excessive slow motion shots and speeded up photography, fail to bring the movie to life.

The Brothers Strause are best known for doing the visual effects on X Men Origins: Wolverine and directing the video for Nickleback’s How You Remind Me. This says it all really. The movie was made without backing from any major studio and it is easy to see why no one wanted to be involved with a drawn out look at an alien invasion that is more concerned with looking good than telling a story.

If it is alien invasion movies you’re after, you might be better off sticking with Independence Day. If it’s a bad movie you want, War of the Worlds would definitely be more rewarding – at least the characters motivation, such as it is – is clear. As for me, I’ll be sticking with Mars Attacks. At least that movie tries to be over the top and silly. Skyline tries to be serious but fails to address the issues it raises – how people react in a crisis and what these squishy, robotic aliens actually want.

Avoid.