Visually Adept Skyline a Laughably Empty Spectacle
Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson) head to Los Angeles to visit his childhood friend, who is now a famous movie star, Terry (Donald Faison). After a night of carousing they and the rest of their party, Terry’s insecure girlfriend Candice (Brittany Daniel), his publicist Denise (Crystal Reed) and business partner Ray (Neil Hopkins), are jolted awake early the next morning to discover strange lights descending from the sky. It is the beginning of an alien invasion, the group, along with the building’s concierge Oliver (David Zayas), forced to band together as one if they ever hope to survive.
Aliens are among us in Skyline © Rogue Pictures
Skyline was not screened in advance for press which is almost never a good sign. Additionally, making their writing debut with this were visual effects artists Joshua Cordes (Avatar) and Liam O’Donnell (Iron Man 2), something that had me wondering if characters would be given the cold shoulder in exchange for big epic moments of special effects-fueled mayhem. Finally, the film is directed by The Brothers Strause, the guys behind the execrable Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, a fact that kept my aspirations for the picture understandably low.
The good news? The film looks great. Made on a relative shoestring (I’ve read numbers between twenty and thirty million but nothing has been confirmed) and independently from any studio (Universal’s genre arm Rogue Pictures picked the title up after it was completed), the effects in this are aces. The alien creatures are some machine-organic hybrid recalling Japanese anime classics like Ghost in the Shell as well as Andy and Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix. While I’d not remotely call them original that doesn’t make them any less fascinating to look at, the last third in particular filled with eye-popping moments of man versus alien carnage that’s admittedly impressive.
Sadly, that’s really it for the good news. The script is strictly a one-dimensional Irwin Allen disaster movie hodgepodge crossed with alien invasion clichés so ripe the Syfy Channel would be likely to laugh them off as ludicrous. The characters are by and large unlikable, the actors given incredibly little to do and any attempts at coherence or continuity are so brief and transparent I can’t recall when they might have occurred – and I just left the movie theatre! Most of the movie is dumb with a capital “D,” the climax so idiotic the moans of displeasure from the matinee audience I saw it with echoed throughout the auditorium as if they’d been recorded in THX and delivered in surround sound.
For the most part the film revolves around Jarrod and Elaine, but I dare anyone to care a lick if either of them survives. The former begins to develop new powers after he escapes the hypnotizing blue light used by the aliens to lure humans to their deaths, while the latter whines and moans continuously failing to offer up constructive alternatives to the ideas her boyfriend keeps presenting her with. They are as unappealing a pair of heroes as any I could have imagined beforehand, their final moment together – which also just happens to be the last scene in the movie – such a silly and melodramatic whopper if it weren’t so mind-bogglingly stupid I’d almost have been impressed by its sheer unabashed sequel setting up audacity.
That’s right. The movie doesn’t end, it just sort of stops in the middle taking its Japanese anime aspirations to the absolute histrionic and unintentionally laughable breaking point. Those expecting some sort of rousing conclusion they could get behind, or at least a sinisterly unsettling one a la Planet of the Apes or The Thing, will certainly have another thing coming, the finale nothing more than a “To Be Continued” cliffhanger sure to have audiences scratching their heads in furious indignation.
I can’t say I hated Skyline. It’s certainly a step up from Colin and Greg Strause’s last directorial attempt, and as far as spectacle goes there’s plenty here I was amply impressed with. But the brothers don’t seem to care a lick for character, can’t pace things to save their lives and seem to have no ability with actors whatsoever. They’re strictly visualists, nothing more, grand purveyors of empty eye candy but whose narrative skills appear shakily limited. As sci-fi epics go this one looks great buts tastes terrible, and by the time it was over I couldn’t get out of the theatre fast enough.
Correction (11/14/10): Apparently the budget for this one was actually only just under $10-million (before prints and advertising costs), making the visual ingenuity of the picture even a wee bit more impressive.
Film Rating: ê1/2 (out of 4)
