Skyline (2010)

Movie Info

I wish I could look into the abyss of the alien ships and escape this movie

Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and his wife Elaine (Scottie Thompson) are headed to LA to visit Jarrod’s friend Terry (Donald Faison) who is making a killing in movie scene.  When a strange light comes down from the sky above the city, a horror begins.  Creatures from outer space have come to harvest the people of Earth and nothing seems capable of stopping them.  As the group fights to survive in a skyscraper, the aliens continue to grow more and more power…can they be stopped?

Directed by Greg and Colin Strause, Skyline is a science fiction horror movie.  The movie face a lawsuit with Sony over the rival film Battle:  Los Angeles which had effects produced by the Strause brothers’ company Hydraulx Filmz which was scheduled for a release after Skyline.  The movie was met with negative reviews but was a box office success.

Skyline looked like every other generic science-fiction alien invasion film.  Though some of the visuals looked strong, the movie didn’t look like anything special.  I skipped the film.  With two sequels, I decided to check out Skyline and my first interpretation of it wasn’t wrong.

I bet the apartment will still charge a ton…despite the aliens

There doesn’t seem to be much of a plot to Skyline.  It is made clear very early on that it is a hopeless situation.  The aliens far outclass Earthlings and no matter what the survivors of the first wave of attacks did, they weren’t going to win.  The movie then devolves to typical squabbling (“I think we should go to the ocean”, “I think we should hide”, etc.) that dominates much of the film and gets pretty old quickly.  Add to that the main character appears to be infected so it doesn’t matter if he does survive the aliens…hope is gone.  It all leads to a last scene which just extends this and doesn’t add much to the story.

The cast is quite bland.  It felt like for a while Eric Balfour was being pushed as one of those “next big thing” actors and that he was in a lot of stuff…but he always seemed to fizzle.  Scottie Thompson comes off as rather unlikable as his wife who doesn’t seem very helpful in his situation.  Donald Faison is presented as the costar, but he becomes the sacrificial costar (he wasn’t a good person since he cheated on his girlfriend so that mean he has to die).  David Zayas has a small appearance in the beginning of the film but becomes more significant later…but he too doesn’t add much to the plot since his “let’s hide” goal seems pointless.

This guy is just happy not to have to hear anyone whine anymore

I will say that some of the effects and visuals of Skyline are impressive.  I like the shots of the alien ships spread out over Los Angeles sucking up people.  The aliens kind of look like rip-offs from The Matrix sequels but the “dead eye” look of people who get caught in their lights is good.  Overall, the film looks decent, but like the movie, the effects are very distinctive.

Skyline isn’t a good movie.  It has a couple moments, but it is largely too long and too poorly executed to be interesting.  You have a group of unlikable characters who you are supposed to root for, but it becomes very hard when you don’t care if the non-descript aliens wipe them out…you just wish that they’d do it sooner instead of hearing them argue for almost an hour and a half.  Skyline was followed by Beyond Skyline in 2017.