Skyline

There's a sense that Skyline's minute shreds of credibility stem solely from the fact that this film got out of the gate before Battle: Los Angeles (the other aliens-invade-LA movie released in the last six months). Made on an unbelievable budget of just $8 million by special effects wizards "the Brothers Strause", it's very much a case of the madmen taking over the asylum. These CGI magicians have designed special effects for over 60 films, and judging from Skyline (and their only other directorial credit, Aliens Vs. Predator - Requiem) it seems like they probably don't really have any business being in charge of an entire movie. Skyline is all surface and no substance, but in a strange way this is part of its charm - it's a solidly crap and completely bonkers B movie in an era where sci-fi-action films are largely unambitious in their design and conception.

Don't get me wrong, this is a very shitty movie. I kept expecting Bradley Cooper or some Grey's Anatomy cast members to show up, but even they were above working in this film. It features a bunch of nightclub-wannabe nobodies playing equally worthless characters, and they all give performances worthy of daytime television. A lot of people have complained about the ending of this movie but I'd like to complain specifically about it's beginning. The film opens on a interest-piquing scene where the aliens invade in the wee hours of the morning and beginning warping people with this strange blue light, but then the film rewinds to set up who the characters are in an awkward attempt to give us a context. The problem is, we don't care who any of these characters are - the film couldn't afford any good actors (or even an average scriptwriter) so why on Earth would we give a damn about how these people came to be in L.A.? It has nothing to do with the rest of the film, it's boring, and we just want to see the alien invasion already, dammit!

Anyway, the film proceeds to depict a grand-scale alien invasion from the perspective of a small group of characters. It looks great and I can't really fault the special effects. The one thing Skyline does well is monster design and execution... the aliens look really cool, but unfortunately this is all it really has going for it. There's no subtext, it's just mindless visual popcorn. The direction (as you might expect from a pair of effects jockeys) is superficially pumped this way with a gamer's fetishistic lust for lens flare and big reveal shots. The poster's tagline should've been, "If you like lens flare then you'll love this movie!" The plot is full of a lot of idiotic holes too, for example - why would a side effect of the weird alien light be to give someone superpowers? And why would a guy with a dedicated survive-at-all-costs mentality suddenly decide to kill himself in order to take just one of the monsters out (other than for the film to have a big dramatic hero moment)?

I probably shouldn't be so hard on the movie. Skyline gets points for cutting (relatively) straight to the chase. I also loved how the production team used bright blue light rather than shadows to 'hide the strings', it made a nice change from your usual dark, night-shrouded monster movies where you can barely see anything. And yes, the ending to this movie is completely ridiculous, but if you sit down and watch this film and make it all the way to the end then I dare say you aren't bothered by this sort of thing. Watch this with low expectations and you might find yourself enjoying it despite your higher faculties.

DIRECTOR: Colin Strause and Greg Strause
WRITER/SOURCE: Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell. Their first film script, both have previously worked as special effects crew members.
KEY ACTORS: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, Crystal Reed, David Zayas, Donald Faison

RELATED TEXTS:
- Battle: Los Angeles, also about aliens invading Los Angeles. The Brothers Strause actually worked on this film whilst simultaneously directing Skyline, which led to a lawsuit from Sony Pictures regarding accusations that funds had been misappropriated from Battle: Los Angeles. The court case was later dropped.
- Skyline cribs from a variety of visually arresting sci-fi films, most notably Cloverfield and Starship Troopers.