REVIEW: Skyline Gives Brain-Eating Aliens a Bad Name
If the trailers for Skyline made you believe this picture might be a reasonably entertaining space-invasion thriller, with at least semi-dazzling visual effects, actors who make a decent attempt to impersonate believable human beings and a script that isn't scraped from the very bottom of the screenwriting barrel, you could be forgiven: The advertising for Skyline makes it look like a real movie, the sort of thing you might be willing to check out just for fun if you happen to have a spare 10 bucks (or so) lying around.
Let this be another lesson in the illusory magnetism of advertising: Skyline is a piece of junk, even in a movie climate littered with expensive -- though sometimes fun -- junkiness. The guilty party behind this monstrosity are Colin Strause and Greg Strause -- also known as the Brothers Strause -- two visual-effects experts whose credits as effects designers or supervisors include lots of movies you've probably heard of (Avatar, Titanic, The Nutty Professor) and who have also worked on videos for acts like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Linkin Park and Nickelback. In addition, they've directed one previous full-length film, the 2007 AVPR: Aliens vs. Predator -- Requiem, Part XVIII -- OK, that's not the actual title, but it's pretty close.
As Skyline opens, boyfriend-and-girlfriend duo Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and Elaine (Scottie Thompson) have just flown into Los Angeles to visit one of Jarrod's old pals, Terry (Donald Faison), who's made good and lives in a luxurious high-rise. That night, after a wild party in Terry's crib, Los Angeles is ambushed by blue lights that drop mysteriously from the sky. As Jarrod quickly learns, if you look at these lights directly for any length of time, blue veins begin to creep across your skin like bad tattoo work, and your eyes go all cataracty and stuff. Then, the light sucks you in and that's the end of you.
It turns out that these lights emanate from massive creatures that are also crablike spaceships; or maybe these are just creatures inside of other creatures that resemble spaceships -- it's impossible to tell. Some of them look like mechanical jellyfish-type critters; others are octopi-like, with blue lights on the tips of their waving, probing tentacles. All of these predatory alien lo mein owe a debt, as most movie creatures do these days, to the mother-monster of the Alien movies, and though they're rather cool-looking, in a way, they're actually very sad, lonely little creatures. They've come to Earth, War of the Worlds-style, to decimate humanity -- they feed on human brains, it turns out, so they actually do have a motive. But no one has bothered to write an actual movie around them. You can't blame them for being pissed off.
The premise of Skyline isn't terrible in itself. But the writers, Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell, haven't troubled themselves to do anything with it. Very little happens in Skyline other than the usual generic stuff: The creatures feel around in parking garages to yank out, and then eat, their prey; the National Guard shoots at them, but can't kill them; "bad" people who fornicate outside of their regular partnerships meet a nasty end; characters stare blankly out windows and at each other as they declaim lines like "There's something out there!" and "We don't know what they're capable of!" And for what it's worth, the ending borrows somewhat, and not particularly well, from District 9.
The appeal of a movie like Skyline is the promise of watching big, snazzy-looking special-effecty beasties destroy whole cities, ruthlessly and remorselessly. And Skyline does, at the barest level, offer that much. But the whole thing feels like a very expensive and insulting sham, an enterprise built on the idea that you can give audiences trash and, if that trash is big enough and loud enough, they just won't know any better. I kept waiting for something interesting or suspenseful or creepy to happen in Skyline -- the minutes ticked by very slowly, and that payoff never came. The movie does have a downer of an ending, perhaps to make us think it's somehow deep. But it doesn't cut very deep at all; it barely skims the surface. Skyline may strive for magnificence. But to achieve that, it would first have to make an impression. And all it can do is make noise.
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
Comments
With each negative review I read or hear, my desire to see this movie increases exponentially!
Who's stopping you?
This movie started off good and I thought we are in for a real theatrical treat hear, the concept of aliens dropping light probes down to the surface of a planet to draw out the natives so they could be vacuumed up later by the massive dyson, looked like a great plot, but alas there was no middle, if you call a middle sitting in a hotel room on the top floor for 45 minutes middle OK, but I don’t. The middle also consisted of a underground car park where there where two other people going somewhere with suit cases, There was no plan or reason to anything, huge ships with blue head lights and small crab like things that looked like something from the abyss that had tentacles, that could catch helicopters but not a Mercedes. A nuclear bomb went off and the ship fell to the ground and a few minutes later it started to rebuild it self somehow. There were two solders with guns, and a fighter jet that looked really fake. Then there was the end. They floated up to the big ship in the sky and had a varicose vain problem as they snuggled on there way to heaven, oh no sorry not heaven, more like goo and shit on the floor with tentacles grabbing people by the head and taking there brains to run more machine crap like creatures. That was pretty much the film, the humans have lost, they left it open for Skyline 2 but I wont be going to see it. I think it was daylight robbery, I WOULD LOVE MY MONEY BACK.
There's no more plot to this film than there is to Cloverfield or any number of zombie movies where the protagonists are simply trying to stay alive.
Parallels will be drawn with Independence Day, which was a huge commercial success. Compared to ID, this plot is far superior. ID is incredibly unrealistic, and takes detours several times to blatently sign post the plot to the viewer.
What are the aliens intentions? In ID, they make the aliens psychic and force a scene where one of them tells the president it's dastardly plans (uh-huh) - in this film we just don't know.
How we will defeat the aliens? In ID, we make our a virus, which is magically compatible with alien Vista and we fly one of their ships into there mothership and then surf the blast-wave back home. Uh huh. In this film, we do a pretty poor job against far superior alien technology. There are no magic solutions.
The characters spend a lot of time in their building, because quite frankly, so would all of us if faced with the same scenario. In only major flaw is the suggestion that they go to the marina to get on a boat (really? a boat? does that strike you as a safe haven?).
This isn't a typical hollywood film, it doesn't promise a hollywood ending. The CGI is very good and the suspense is kept high through out. It's an entertaining film with a good twist ending (which unfortunately, like the Sixth Sense will be known to everyone by tomorrow).
No disrespect Stephanie but it would seem that your review doesn't warrant the derogatary review which you submitted, which ultimately summed up Skyline as 'trash'
The Strause Bros have done with a miniscule budget what Roland Emerich did with $75,000,000. (ok fair enough that was back in 96 but Emerich didn't invent the Sci Fi genre).
Ever since the Strause Bros released AVP: Requiem (which wasn't half as bad as critcis claimed) they seem to be getting slated at every turn. I say fairplay to the Strause Bros to showin some cojones and showing how a sci Fi flick can be made to look like a box office hit with an independant aproach.
Just the trailer of Skyline is better than the misleading snooze fest which was monsters (which hardly every turn up, and they're just giant squid anyway).
True, unique design has gone into creating the aliens in Skyline.
The Strause bros didn't intend to make a serious drama out of a Sci Fi, they are simply showing what they can do with 'a couple of quid' and a decent cast, they're just stretching they're legs with Skyline.
I just hope your not following the current trend of knocking down the underdogs, because i don't beleive for a second that Skyline deserves to be refered to as 'trash', if it does then what the hell is 'Monsters (which has been critically aclaimed for some reason)'
Skyline was a huge steaming pile of crap. Why do the aliens need human brains? What happens if there are no lesser creatures around to provide a brain supply? Why did the humans use one nuke (which almost worked), and then never try another. Couldn't they sneak a submarine right under that alien ship and lambaste it? Why did the aliens have incredible technology, but were unable to SEE THROUGH A BLIND? What crap!
@George B. Romero
Skyline wasn't crap, and your over analysing superficial plot flaws.
Lets see what kind of a Sci Fi flick you can make with the budget they used.
@George B. Romero
Skyline wasn't crap, your over analysing superficial plot flaws.
Lets see what kind of Sci Fi flick you can make with the budget the Strause Bros used.
Godawful movie. I was seriously hoping for a fun sci-fi flick. Nothing deep, just a good popcorn movie. Instead I was bored out of my mind and only didn't leave the theater cause my friends were with me. The characters are completely unlikable and don't actually feel like real people at all.With only two exceptions no one seemed to know how to actually act. There were plot holes you could drive that glowy mothership through. As my friend put it, "At the end, I was rooting for the aliens to just kill these damn people so I can go home." Awful movie save your $10 bucks and go rent Alien, Terminator, or even ID4, and stay away from this crime against man and god.
I saw Skyline last night and I was disapointed. I love these types of movies when they have a point and a plot and I left confused as to what just happened. If you can rebuild a flying saucer after a nuclear missle is fired you would be unable to use human brains that would be destroyed from radiation. Also the constant feeling of hoplessness led me to know how the movie would end. Pointless! save your money and go see a love story with a plot.
I liked the ending in this movie and left feeling like I got what I came for. Is there a coincidence between Phillip Morris new brand skyline and cigarette smoking in Skyline, seeing how they both just came out? I dunno but this was on my mind all week too see the corporate connection. Other than the scary thought that the real science fiction is how subliminal is everywhere nowadays not a bad movie look for the payoff at the end because there isn't much substance through the rest.
I just saw Skyline and found it to be a slightly above average scifi flick. This review is garbage from someone who couldn't bother to think through implications of the plot unless a movie spells them out for you. You give tired thought-free movies like "Morning Glory" an eight and "Eat, Pray, Love" 7.5 while slamming this movie with a stupidly low score. You might want to stick to chick flicks since you clearly aren't capable of judging much else.
My ending would have been: Jarrod got his brain eaten, fine! His earlier contamination made his memory prevail over alien's, fine! Now make all these aliens somehow connected to each other, like a hive (it is not unusual), and make jarrod communicate with all human brain matter that was consumed, bringing out human memories to overwhelm alien control and cause a monetary system crashdown. enough for the US, Russia, France, Nato, the UK, Israel, and other military airforces around the world exploit that little window and knock down enoug aliens that they are eventualy forced to purge what they consumed, turn tail and run with what is left of their armada. I am sorry, similar to Independence Day, yes, but we get to win!!!!! I sont like any movie where we just simply lose. It goes against God, and if you are not religious, it goes against being human, because we kick ass, everytime, and survive, through our ingenuity, heart and spirit. And I am sorry, our nukes too, dam it.
I actually liked this movie. Although the environment seemed to be a little sumblime, it is seen very much from the point of view of Jarrod which took us through the last day of his normal existence. I think what people don't like about the movie is the fact that it does not have the stereotypical Hollywood ending. The bad guys do win this one, there isn't a lot of hope against creatures that exist only to feed on what seems to be the electrical portion of human brains, which does seem to power their ships and their very existence.
I do think going into this movie with no expectations will give one a better chance to enjoy it rather than going in with the intention of thrashing the producers. I've always wanted to see a movie where we don't win, we don't get a happy Hollywood ending, and we don't survive. It was refreshing and I liked it. Glad that we all have an opinion and can exercise our right to choose...
Lee
i don't remember the last time i saw something that bad.
the script made no sense, and frankly i wonder how far into production the cast got before they realized, "fuck it, i got a mortgage to pay."
a lot of the CGI shots were beautifully done, but everything involving particle effects and volumetric smoke matted against photography looked fake, fake, fake.
ultimately though, with a piece-of-shit script, it doesn't matter how nice it looks. this was a gregg araki or troma romp with all the fun parts yanked out. it could have been amazing garbage, but it ended up only pedestrian.
IT'S AN INDIE FILM PEOPLE. Don't go in expecting the best sci-fi movie ever. It's an indie sci fi thrilled. That's what I went in expecting, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Much more so than District 9, which I found unnecessarily gory, yet everyone creamed themselves over it. Stop expecting the world from every flick, buy some popcorn and enjoy, for the love of god.
Unfortunately this film was tripe. And what a waste that is!
A good (if somewhat tired) premise, and some lovely visual design, all thrown away for want of a decent story and some drama.
They even had conflict between the characters (the affair, the pregnancy, the homesickness) but didn't develop any of this - instead choosing to use them as brain fodder.
I got tired of seeing aliens knocked down and then coming back to life. I got tired of seeing people hiding behind cupboards whilst Matrix squiddies looked for them. I got *really* tired of Jarrod and Elaine running from place to place whilst having their path blocked time and again by various sparkly monsters.
I was looking forward to some creepy Invasion of the Bodysnatchers type movie, or perhaps a grown-up's version of Independence Day, but sadly we got a film which borrows from countless others and still fails to deliver very much.
So just to clarify - Skyline is only "1" star (out of ten) shittier than Inception, according to Stephanie Zacharek.
Skyline was the biggest crap ever produced this year.
Stupidest movie ever next to "M Night Shamalala's The Happening" for all of you that thought otherwise, you need to get out more. I will not fall for another "Brothers Strauss" gimmick as their trailer which advertised a different movie than we seen. Shame on you Strauss' I'll never bite again
Are you saying all Indie movies suck? Even an Indie movie can come up with a better plan than hiding in a hotel room and running from squids. Come on now...
Son, I am disappoint.
If this movie (so-called) can make a box office hit, the PR firm absolutely deserves a prize. If this is a short TV series, I forgive them for not wasting my time and money.
Hey, I liked this movie .... I thought it was really good ...
I'm sorry.
Skyline what a joke. ...I won't my money back please. No where near comparison to the mega block buster hit Independence Day...sure another mankind vs. aliens for world dominance, but it was fun to watch. The special effects were great and best of all the good guys won at the end. Mankind face with the greatest of challenges will endure.
the only word I can think of is ...derivative and pastiche like (sorry 2 words). as an experiment in non heroic character development it was slow and boring,as a whole it was trite and misleading by the use of bad camera closeups and silly technical shots which in the end are not a replacement for a well thought out plot and story..sorry
Next »