Skyline

Directed by: The Brothers Strauss

Starring: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, Donald Faison

Synopsis:

Jarrod (Balfour) and Elaine (Thompson) travel to Los Angeles for Jarrod’s old buddy Terry (Faison)’s birthday. Terry’s made it big in Showbiz and has a great penthouse in the centre of town. Early in the morning, after the celebrations have died down, mysterious blue lights descend from the sky, sucking up anyone who looks directly into the light. An Alien invasion has begun, abducting thousands of people at once. Trapped in their penthouse, Jarrod, Elaine and Terry try to come to terms with what is happening and find a way to escape...

Review:

The Brothers Strauss would have to go a long way to earn any goodwill from me after the debacle which was Alien Vs Predator:Requiem. Taken on it’s own merits, it was an average teen slasher pic but it also wasted two of the biggest genre icons and didn’t understand what made either of them great.Having said that, I suspect there was something of a conspiracy surrounding the huge hateful backlash meted out on the internet with the arrival of Skyline, which turns out to be a quite enjoyable, action-packed fx showcase.

Characterisation is kept to an absolute minimum, which each character allowed one motif to identify him or her from the rest: Elaine, for example, is pregnant, while Terry’s wife Candace (Daniel) is a self-centred harridan, and Jarrod wants to protect his “family”.

The whole film is taken from the point of view of these few survivors as they huddle together in the penthouse, trying to keep clear of the alien hunter machines which periodically scan the building. They bicker about which course of action to take and decide to try and strike out for the marina. This proves to be a bit of a mistake for the characters but a real boon for the viewer, as we are treated to an excellent spectacle of our protagonists trying to out-run an alien behemoth which has just crushed a Ferrari!

The atmosphere is excellent. With our protagonists we have a great view on what is happening in the surrounding city, and bare witness to attempts by the military to fight back. There’s a great ariel dogfight between the aliens and unmanned aircraft, and in particular a stealth jet attempting to launch a nuclear missile at the “mother ship”. However the invaders prove to be stronger than first anticipated and which each passing minute, with each hair-raising escape from danger, you start to feel that they are just delaying the inevitable.

There is a kind-of subplot about Jarrod – he’d looked into the light at the beginning of the film but had been saved from being spirited away. However the experience seems to have changed his physiognomy at some level. This feeds into the film’s climax, which manages to be dark, bleak, tragic and heroic all at the same time. It’s a real shame that the film didn’t run for another ten minutes to expand on what was about to happen.

Verdict

Don’t tell anyone I said this but Skyline isn’t half bad. The dialogue and characters are mediocre but the action and fx work are very cool indeed, and the finale is just crazy beautiful.

7 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)

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