Director: Colin Strause, Greg Strause (AvP: Requiem)
Writers: Joshua Cordes, Liam O’Donnell
Producers: Liam O’Donnell, Colin Strause, Greg Strause, Kristian James Andresen
Starring: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, Crystal Reed, Neil Hopkins
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running time: 92 min.

(3.5/5)

While the jury is still out on Jonathan Liebesman’s World Invasion: Battle LA, this little movie came out of nowhere to generate lots of buzz at the San Diego Comic Con (and which was, later, at the centre of a lawsuit between Sony and Universal) beat the big budget extravaganza out the gate by a few months and the results are mixed.

Directed by the Strause Brothers (of AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem fame), Skyline employs a quasy story as a backdrop for the real action: an alien invasion. Jarrod and Elaine travel to LA to see Jarrod’s movie star friend Terry on his birthday. After a night of heavy partying, the group wakes in the early morning to the building shaking and a bright blue light outside the window of Terry’s 20th floor penthouse. The aliens have arrived and they’re on a mission to empty the city of humans (and pretty soon they’re going to be seriously pissed off). The group is indecisive; floundering between leaving the apartment or hiding out until help arrives. They end up trying to make an escape only to find themselves trapped inside the building.

It is a pretty half-hearted story and the dialogue and story clearly indicate that this was not the filmmakers main concern. The actors do what they can with what little they have got to work with and though it is mostly uninspired, Eric Balfour and Scottie Thompson are likeable leads. Though the chemistry between the two, on which a big chunk of the films story rests, is mostly lacking, Balfour in particular manages to keep the story moving.

But what of the aliens? Some, the ones that fly, are reminiscent of sentinels from the Wachowski Brothers Matrix franchise while the rest look more like the monster from Cloverfield, albeit on a smaller scale (what is with this recent interpretation of aliens as big, lanky monsters? No one sent me that memo). What I like most of Skyline is that it doesn’t compromise on the invasion: the aliens are on a mission. They are bigger, their technology is better and there’s nothing we can do to stop them and regardless of how many times the Strauses turn the story to Jarrod and his friends; it’s clear that there is no way they, or anyone else for that matter, is going to survive. The effects are impressive and as is the scale of the action and there’s never a feeling that this was made by a bunch of amateurs in a back room. It is impressive what can be achieved on a low-budget and the Strauses pull out all the stops and create some great and occasionally even breathtaking effects; the distant screams as the bodies are sucked into the centre of the spaceships are chilling and extremely effective.

Skyline does well with its mediocre, over wrought story (accompanied by a bombastic score which sounds like it was lifted directly from Independence Day) until the final 15 minutes when it goes completely off the rails and into melodrama squared. The downfall begins on the rooftop with Jarrod beating an alien to death with a brick and narrowly surviving a crashing jet only to be sucked into the belly of a spaceship with his girlfriend Elaine. It’s here that Skyline really loses it with a postscript that looks cool but adds nothing to the story and if anything, actually takes away a little of the high from the rest of the film.

It is not the best alien invasion film we have seen and it is likely only one of the first of the barrage that will pop up in the coming years but Skyline is a fun watch and I am impressed that the filmmaker’s stuck to their guns and provided a fatalistic ending to their story.