Reviewed; Skyline
Watched so you don't have to!
Rating: 4/10
Overall: Some awesome special effects let down horrifically by dislikeable characters and a nonsensical plot that actually hurts to think about.
Beware for beyond the spoiler there are spoilers and Adult concepts.
Briefly: Let me be very blunt, Skyline is not a good movie. It's not the worst movie i've ever seen by a long shot, it's visually stunning and has some very nice effects that are used quite subtly at times but if you want to see a very pretty B movie there are probably better choices.
In detail:
Starting with the concept.
... wait what is the concept, these aliens ... wait a second there, we presume these are aliens at no point are we actually sure what these things are, indeed the movie itself plays with the possibility that these entities may not be from outer space at all with one of the characters briefly mentioning, "They took them up like it was the rapture!" given this single line and the slightly angelic glowing theme the creatures take up it's possible to speculate a little.
But let's just go with aliens, aliens makes more sense of what little sense there is in this movie.
So aliens arrive at long last and apparently wanting to preseve Earth's property value rather then blowing everything up send down these glowy whispy probes of energy, if you look at one you start to get all dehydrated and feel compelled to move towards it, even if you are on the penthouse suite of a skyscraper.
Visually this aspect is handled very well it looks great as we see these strange writhing masses of light and you can see the resulting effects on the characters lines appearing around their eyes and on their faces indicating that something is up.
The movie then cuts back to 72 hours ago, this is presumably so we get to know the little cadre of characters we will be following, this is usually a good story telling narrative, except it doesn't really tell us anything about the characters except I really don't like them they are all vapid shallow people that i'm now rooting for to get killed off.
That's right it's not even 25 minutes into the movie and i'm already wanting the aliens to start abduting the heroes.
The plot progresses back to the point where the alien probes land and people start getting abducted, after the initial wave Erric Balfor (Jarrod) and Donald Faison (Turk I uh mean
Terry) go up onto the roof to see what's going on Jarrod accidentally let's the fire exit door swing close.
Now i'm no expert on fire doors but seriously if you have one of these on the roof get it replaced with one that opens in emergancies, not one that you have to only open from the inside, as safety design goes this is a really bad one.
Anywho back to the movie Jarrod (who is a part time graphic designer/artist/photographer/douche) takes some pictures of the aliens scooping people up and we get some really rather awesome special effects here, for what is a low budget movie they really use it very well and the image (that can be seen in the trailers) of people being sucked up in a whirlwind is rather good.
Then from the skies BIGGER alien ships appear and start to properly invade, little ships come off and start to scoop up stragglers including attempting to do so to our heroes sensibly the heroes hide under coffe tables until Turk from Scrubs get's an idea to drive to the marina and get on his large boat to avoid the aliens, at first I thought I see you've watched the not so awesome remake of Night of the Living Dead where some characters who are perfectly safe, have supplies and are under no real threat suddenly get a case of the stupids.
Well that's fine I guess, panicing people do stupid things so we get a bit of an action sequence of heading down to the parking garage where there's some other survivors in the garage that you presume will join up with or be sent to a swift death.
I'll let you ponder which as there's a short driving sequence, Turk's choice of escaping to the marina is ... an open top car.
Well ... that's an intresting choice there, I was sure that something would happen with this but nopes Turk is just about to drive out the garage when an new previously unseen alien stops his car in half, killing one of the heroes and then using vine whip to capture Turk whilst the remaining heroes drive back into the garage and have an epic battle with a garage door opener.
Just as the garage door is opening another alien can be seen on the other side!
Oh noes, it's a bit early for them all the be captured and surely enough a incidental character that was shown briefly turns up and saves them.
Then there's the first of many baffling parts of the movie, the way the characters are saved is by driving a 4x4 into an alien, it works as you'd expect but the alien is still alive and reaches across grabbing one of the other survivors and sucking out his brain, using it to regenerate.
What?
... really movie?
*sigh* okay we'll assume somehow these aliens are biologically capable of using brains to regenerate, sure why not.
The characters then make it back upstairs to hide for a bit, it's a nice time lapse sequence that brings us to day 2.
By this point Jarrod has seen the hypnotic alien lights once too often and has a permanent case of strange weird lines that are probably significant of something and has the genius idea that they should leave the apartement and get to the marina.
But not before there is the sound of gunfire outside, some more survivors fighting back and doing not very well, then in the sky jets! Lots of jets and some stealth bombers.
After some nifty flying, lots of shooting there's one stealth bomber within distance of the alien craft and it launches it's missile.
I know we are all expecting an independance day style green shit shield but no, that was a very large missile indeed somehow one of the characters somehow recognisies a thermo-nuclear warhead when he sees it and manages to tell everyone to duck and cover.
It helps about as much as expected, in fairness they are quite far away from the detonation zone and once again in a marvel for low budget the nuke looks and sounds very convincing but...
BUT?!
That's right aliens are nuke resistant.
Movie don't pull this crap now, they eat brains AND can regenerate from a nuke?
...
Sure whatever it's just a movie, relax.
So it's back to Jarrod's plan with the threat of fallout heading towards them and at least the other characters call him out on it also, but he's now stronger thanks to the strange lines in his veins and with force convinces most of the characters to leave which is how it comes down to just him and his girlfriend on the roof, again the best place to be but never mind, they come face to face with an alien that starts to try and eat Jarrod's brain.
At which point his girlfriend does it in with a fire axe and then Jarrod beats it to a bloody pulp with his fists and a brick.
But it's okay! Here comes that big one that stomped on Turk's car earlier, it will be harder to kill with a fire axe and brick, but thankfully a fighter jet sees them on the roof and attacks the big one doing very little damage until the jet itself is attacked and explodes part of the wing slow motion jumping across the roof almost killing Jarrod and his girlfriend before impacting on the big one and taking it out.
So now with the roof safe and there some scaffolding that could easily take them to safety, Jarrod just gives up, apparently having his brain almost sucked out was too stressing and he just lies there on the roof as a craft appears over head and sucks them both up.
Lesser movies would end now, but not Skyline on no we get to see inside the alien craft where there's a huge brain processing factory, sucking out human brains intact and putting them into alien craft.
Now movie i'm really confused, are the aliens doing something good here or bad, how can I tell if these people are being killed or saved?
Anyway it's Jarrod's turn to get his brain sucked out properly and his brain glows red, rather then green like the others and just as his girlfriend looks on in horror her own brain about to be sucked clean the alien stops sensing her unborn child inside her and moves her to another area where there are other women, presumable also with unborn kids inside.
Before you get much time to think about this and what the heck Jarrod's red brain is placed into a large alien shell, like the one that stomped on Turk's car earlier and it's made clear that Jarrod is able to control this new body as he moves to protect his girlfriend.
And the movie ends.
Apparently Skyline is one of a series of movies.
I've watched it here so you don't have to.
Rating: 4/10
Overall: Some awesome special effects let down horrifically by dislikeable characters and a nonsensical plot that actually hurts to think about.
Beware for beyond the spoiler there are spoilers and Adult concepts.
Briefly: Let me be very blunt, Skyline is not a good movie. It's not the worst movie i've ever seen by a long shot, it's visually stunning and has some very nice effects that are used quite subtly at times but if you want to see a very pretty B movie there are probably better choices.
In detail:
Starting with the concept.
... wait what is the concept, these aliens ... wait a second there, we presume these are aliens at no point are we actually sure what these things are, indeed the movie itself plays with the possibility that these entities may not be from outer space at all with one of the characters briefly mentioning, "They took them up like it was the rapture!" given this single line and the slightly angelic glowing theme the creatures take up it's possible to speculate a little.
But let's just go with aliens, aliens makes more sense of what little sense there is in this movie.
So aliens arrive at long last and apparently wanting to preseve Earth's property value rather then blowing everything up send down these glowy whispy probes of energy, if you look at one you start to get all dehydrated and feel compelled to move towards it, even if you are on the penthouse suite of a skyscraper.
Visually this aspect is handled very well it looks great as we see these strange writhing masses of light and you can see the resulting effects on the characters lines appearing around their eyes and on their faces indicating that something is up.
The movie then cuts back to 72 hours ago, this is presumably so we get to know the little cadre of characters we will be following, this is usually a good story telling narrative, except it doesn't really tell us anything about the characters except I really don't like them they are all vapid shallow people that i'm now rooting for to get killed off.
That's right it's not even 25 minutes into the movie and i'm already wanting the aliens to start abduting the heroes.
The plot progresses back to the point where the alien probes land and people start getting abducted, after the initial wave Erric Balfor (Jarrod) and Donald Faison (Turk I uh mean
Terry) go up onto the roof to see what's going on Jarrod accidentally let's the fire exit door swing close.
Now i'm no expert on fire doors but seriously if you have one of these on the roof get it replaced with one that opens in emergancies, not one that you have to only open from the inside, as safety design goes this is a really bad one.
Anywho back to the movie Jarrod (who is a part time graphic designer/artist/photographer/douche) takes some pictures of the aliens scooping people up and we get some really rather awesome special effects here, for what is a low budget movie they really use it very well and the image (that can be seen in the trailers) of people being sucked up in a whirlwind is rather good.
Then from the skies BIGGER alien ships appear and start to properly invade, little ships come off and start to scoop up stragglers including attempting to do so to our heroes sensibly the heroes hide under coffe tables until Turk from Scrubs get's an idea to drive to the marina and get on his large boat to avoid the aliens, at first I thought I see you've watched the not so awesome remake of Night of the Living Dead where some characters who are perfectly safe, have supplies and are under no real threat suddenly get a case of the stupids.
Well that's fine I guess, panicing people do stupid things so we get a bit of an action sequence of heading down to the parking garage where there's some other survivors in the garage that you presume will join up with or be sent to a swift death.
I'll let you ponder which as there's a short driving sequence, Turk's choice of escaping to the marina is ... an open top car.
Well ... that's an intresting choice there, I was sure that something would happen with this but nopes Turk is just about to drive out the garage when an new previously unseen alien stops his car in half, killing one of the heroes and then using vine whip to capture Turk whilst the remaining heroes drive back into the garage and have an epic battle with a garage door opener.
Just as the garage door is opening another alien can be seen on the other side!
Oh noes, it's a bit early for them all the be captured and surely enough a incidental character that was shown briefly turns up and saves them.
Then there's the first of many baffling parts of the movie, the way the characters are saved is by driving a 4x4 into an alien, it works as you'd expect but the alien is still alive and reaches across grabbing one of the other survivors and sucking out his brain, using it to regenerate.
What?
... really movie?
*sigh* okay we'll assume somehow these aliens are biologically capable of using brains to regenerate, sure why not.
The characters then make it back upstairs to hide for a bit, it's a nice time lapse sequence that brings us to day 2.
By this point Jarrod has seen the hypnotic alien lights once too often and has a permanent case of strange weird lines that are probably significant of something and has the genius idea that they should leave the apartement and get to the marina.
But not before there is the sound of gunfire outside, some more survivors fighting back and doing not very well, then in the sky jets! Lots of jets and some stealth bombers.
After some nifty flying, lots of shooting there's one stealth bomber within distance of the alien craft and it launches it's missile.
I know we are all expecting an independance day style green shit shield but no, that was a very large missile indeed somehow one of the characters somehow recognisies a thermo-nuclear warhead when he sees it and manages to tell everyone to duck and cover.
It helps about as much as expected, in fairness they are quite far away from the detonation zone and once again in a marvel for low budget the nuke looks and sounds very convincing but...
BUT?!
That's right aliens are nuke resistant.
Movie don't pull this crap now, they eat brains AND can regenerate from a nuke?
...
Sure whatever it's just a movie, relax.
So it's back to Jarrod's plan with the threat of fallout heading towards them and at least the other characters call him out on it also, but he's now stronger thanks to the strange lines in his veins and with force convinces most of the characters to leave which is how it comes down to just him and his girlfriend on the roof, again the best place to be but never mind, they come face to face with an alien that starts to try and eat Jarrod's brain.
At which point his girlfriend does it in with a fire axe and then Jarrod beats it to a bloody pulp with his fists and a brick.
But it's okay! Here comes that big one that stomped on Turk's car earlier, it will be harder to kill with a fire axe and brick, but thankfully a fighter jet sees them on the roof and attacks the big one doing very little damage until the jet itself is attacked and explodes part of the wing slow motion jumping across the roof almost killing Jarrod and his girlfriend before impacting on the big one and taking it out.
So now with the roof safe and there some scaffolding that could easily take them to safety, Jarrod just gives up, apparently having his brain almost sucked out was too stressing and he just lies there on the roof as a craft appears over head and sucks them both up.
Lesser movies would end now, but not Skyline on no we get to see inside the alien craft where there's a huge brain processing factory, sucking out human brains intact and putting them into alien craft.
Now movie i'm really confused, are the aliens doing something good here or bad, how can I tell if these people are being killed or saved?
Anyway it's Jarrod's turn to get his brain sucked out properly and his brain glows red, rather then green like the others and just as his girlfriend looks on in horror her own brain about to be sucked clean the alien stops sensing her unborn child inside her and moves her to another area where there are other women, presumable also with unborn kids inside.
Before you get much time to think about this and what the heck Jarrod's red brain is placed into a large alien shell, like the one that stomped on Turk's car earlier and it's made clear that Jarrod is able to control this new body as he moves to protect his girlfriend.
And the movie ends.
Apparently Skyline is one of a series of movies.
I've watched it here so you don't have to.