Darkmatters Review: Skyline

Skyline (15)

Dirs. Colin Strause and Greg Strause (The brothers Strause)

Reviewed by Matt Adcock

“Our first encounter will be our last stand...”

Run for the hills – the alien invasion might just have begun and it looks pretty lovely. There are sparkling blue lights falling from the heavens all across the globe and surprisingly it isn’t even an advertising campaign for Sony’s Blu-Ray packing PS3, no, this is an Independence Day scale invasion of our little planet.

We join the action in Los Angeles where heroic Jarrod (Eric ‘that bloke from 24 who doesn’t make it’ Balfour) and his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie ‘hit US medic show Trauma’ Thompson) are visiting successful pal Terry (Donald ‘Scrubs’ Faison). Their partying is cut short when in the early hours following Terry’s lavish birthday bash ET and his pals gate crash our atmosphere.

Do the invaders (at least some of whom look a lot like the Sentinels from The Matrix) come in peace?

"Earth's last stand might not last that long!?"

In a word ‘no’ – these bad boys are here to harvest our brainstems and those lovely blue beams? They are clever devices which entrance anyone who looks at them and then sucks them up to the waiting spaceships to be processed.

Skyline was made on a very low budget but somehow the directors (working hard to make amends for their terrible crime against cinema Alien vs Predator: Requiem) deliver some tasty special effects. Alas the rest isn’t up to the visual look of the film, the budget limitations mean that for every impressive alien, the payoff is that we get to spend a lot of time in the same few locations.

So it’s best to just let the visually pleasing and highly destructive alien attacks wash over you. The whole concept is vaguely ‘Cloverfield’ like in that our main characters aren’t the heroes fighting back, these are just average Joes witnessing unprecedented events.

There are certainly some action scenes that will stay with you – pick of the bunch is an excellent fighter plane assault on one of the large alien craft in which you half expect to spot Will Smith leading the plucky squadron.

"Hmmm - seems you've been watching too much X-Factor"

But Skyline isn’t a feel good movie, and the bleakness of our human incapacity to oust the aliens certainly hasn’t gone down well in the US where they simply don’t like to lose to anyone. Maybe the very silly pre-sequel set up will see an upturn in the chances of human survival??

SEEN DELETED SCENE:

The cast of Indepence Day team up with those from Skyline to mount a bigger scale fight back... still doesn't work!!?

Darkmatters rating: ööööööö (7 alien ass kickings out of 10)

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