Last updated 9:34 a.m. PT
At this point we've seen just about every kind of alien invasion movie there could be: giant monster aliens, flying saucers, bright lights, tentacles -- you name it, we've seen it. So for an alien invasion movie to set itself apart from the crowd it had better do something different, otherwise it's just another invasion flick that is as forgettable as the one before it. The makers of Skyline attempted to make a different kind of invasion movie, one that's both epic and low key, with a unique take on the reasons behind the invasion (and the human abductions that follow). At least, on the surface ... but when you sit down to actually consider it, Skyline is just a mash-up of your typical alien invasion movie wrapped into one big cheese-filled morsel.
Eric Balfour and his girlfriend (Scottie Thompson) are in L.A. to visit Donald Faison for his birthday. Faison is a big shot who lives in the penthouse suite of a sky rise condo downtown with his spiteful girlfriend. Early the next morning strange lights shoot down from the sky, taking over the willpower of anyone who looks at them. However, these are no ordinary lights, they're alien lights, and they report back to giant space ships that have surrounded the greater Los Angeles area. Trapped inside Faison's penthouse, the group of "friends" try to survive the alien invasion long enough to figure out what they're going to do and how they're going to escape.
Skyline is essentially a compilation of previous alien invasion films. They must have figured a movie that had a little bit of everything would fool people into believing they were watching something original. From the post-birthday party set-up (Cloverfield), to the look and design of the aliens (a cross between 2005's War of the Worlds and Starship Troopers), to that glowing white/blue light (Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Fourth Kind), to the image of a giant mothership hovering over a metropolitan city (District 9 and Independence Day), Skyline is an end-all be-all string of never-ending invasion clichés from start to finish, and if that's what you're looking for then rejoice! Because that's exactly what you get.
But sitting through aliens invading and destroying cities is tolerable and even fun regardless of whether we've seen it a hundred times or not. What makes Skyline tough to sit through isn't the alien stuff or even the invading stuff, but rather all the people stuff that's suppose to make us care who lives and who dies. The five main characters we're forced to follow aren't likable, they're not relatable, they lack reason and logical thinking. For the life of me I'm not exactly sure what Faison does that makes him so rich, or why he's with his mean-spirited girlfriend. If their personalities don't make them intolerable for you, the string of bad decisions they make certainly will.
As grand a scale as the film appears on the surface (with the giant spaceships and the scenic landscape views of the city), the film is actually quite small, with 95 percent of it set in the confines of the penthouse and surround building, including the roof, the stairwell, the poolside, and the garage. The problem is, as with any film, for the setting to be the same throughout it has to be somewhat interesting, and the apartment in question was not. It was rather boring, actually. Most rooms were so sterile that after awhile I wanted everyone to make a run for it, not so they could escape, but so we could have some different scenery.
Alien invasion movies are a dime a dozen and Skyline manages to take a little bit from each of them (in one form or another), playing out like one long cliché after another. That didn't have to be a bad thing, as many of the alien action sequences were fun and rather entertaining. But the characters were lame and the final act features dialogue that gets extremely cheesy, coming off like some hilarious spoof that was aiming for laughs. Still, if all you care about is seeing giant aliens crushing cars and blowing up helicopters, and you have an hour and a half to kill, you could do worse than Skyline. Of course, you could do a lot better, too.
Grade: C-
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