Skyline

In my humble opinion Independence Day is probably the best alien invasion film of recent years, it's only topped by the original War Of The Worlds (not the "hi, I'm Tom Cruise and I was put in this film simply to make money" remake).  As a dedicated X-Phile I like watching stuff which has a little green man theme, but in our next film the invaders are neither little or green; Skyline is my next review.

Skyline opens with the usual brief preamble before the world starts falling apart, Jarrod and his girlfriend Elaine have taken a trip to LA to celebrate the birthday of Jarrods friend Terry, who is now the big man in special effects living in his penthouse apartment with his typical LA blonde bimbo girlfriend, Candice.

The following morning the group are woken by what feels like an earthquake only to see that outside people are being sucked into the sky by shafts of blue light.  Random extra one in the apartment has his fate sealed when he decides to have a good stare out over the balcony, chaos ensues and our two leading men decide the best thing to do in this situation is go onto the roof, where it's nice and exposed, and take some pictures.

When people are caught in the light they begin to physically change, both Jarrod and Elaine are exposed but make miracle recoveries although we later on discover that for some reason it has cause Jarrod to become action man.  This is means that a lot of the time our characters are hiding behind kitchen counters praying that the timer on the electric blinds doesn't decide to open them again.

The thing with Skyline is the characters are relatively believable, none of them are experts in anything really and they bumble about trying to solve their predicament in ways which although may be stupid are probably not that far from a real reaction.  For example, the end of the world is extremely fucking nigh (kudos if you know the reference) but Candice still has time to be pissed at Terry for a bit of extra curricular bathroom activity with his assistant the night before.  They might all be about to die but Terry will be getting his ear chewed first, priorities after all.

It has to be addressed that for an alien invasion movie it had a relatively limited budget, there are no big names here and most of the money went on special effects.  The effects are good, definitely a step up from the type of films you'll see on the Sy-Fy channel, and the alien ships are nicely detailed if not a little Transformer-ish in their movement and appearance when walking through the city.  There are a couple of occasions where the characters are so obviously super imposed onto the background that they may as well be standing in front of a picture, but this is only a small problem and doesn't distract too much.

At this point the problem seemed too big even for Jack Bauer to handle.

Overall the acting is of a fair standard, Balfour and Faison are playing their usual characters just placed into a more stressful environment with Faison being taken out of the game early which was surprising as I would say he was the best known of all the cast.  The two women are largely stereotyped, bimbo looks confused by everything and screams a lot (Sweet Valley High girl is getting on a bit) and Elaine seems to be stuck in permanent nagging mode, if I've had been stuck in a room with her I would not be responsible for my actions!

David Zayas (the always cheerful Batista in Dexter) pops up as the buildings concierge, Oliver.  Oliver appears to be the only person capable of intelligent thought, although it has to be said that he should really check if his lighter works before turning on the gas as it could all have gone horribly wrong.  Nobody is bad, and with an average script with little in the way of wit or dry humour the actors try their best.

Skyline is worth a watch, if only to see an invasion movie which does not have a happy ending; there is no hero, Jeff Goldblum won't be along to plant his virus at the last minute, and the British won't be sitting around drinking tea waiting for the Americans to tell them what to do.  The end sequence in the alien craft is interesting and leaves open the possibility of a predictable sequel, maybe find out what the aliens want with all those brains.

I have one issue with this film; how on earth does one look at a nuclear explosion through a telescope and not end up blind and then nobody seems to suffer any consequences from the fall out given that it wasn't that far away from them.  Just a little shake of the building, see people nuclear weapons are perfectly safe when used against aliens!