Movie Review: “Skyline”

   Skyline is a 2010 science fiction film produced and directed by Brothers Strause, other-wise known for their work in directing Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. If that isn’t enough to draw your attention, … who could blame you. The film stars Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, Crystal Reed, David Zayas, and Donald  Faison.

    There is a couple of known names in the cast. I, for one, like Donald Faison for the role of Turk in Scrubs, and David Zayas for the role of Angel Batista in Dexter.

Skyline received extremely negative reviews from critics, but it turned out not to matter. What mattered was the fact it made nearly $79 million worldwide off a 10-20 million dollar budget.

    Last I heard, a sequel was being developed called Beyond Skyline.

    As I think it is easy to unravel, the film deals with an alien-invasion storyline. There isn’t a whole lot of depth beyond that point. It follows the same basic formula used by most high-concept films. It introduces the characters for the first ten or fifteen minutes, does the absolute bare-minimum to develop them, and then progresses t o the concept. There isn’t really anything left to say about it. They obviously didn’t spend a lot of time flushing out the story or the script.

    The dialogue is atrocious. I have seen legitimate evidence that proves the actors are capable of more than what they accomplished in this film, and yet, every single one of them looks terrible in this movie.

    There are no real “stars” in this flick. It isn’t necessarily their fault. They didn’t exactly have much to work with. They didn’t do much with what they had either though. The characters range from terrible to slightly average, and in that since, there’s some consistency. In-fact, some of them actually annoyed me beyond all else. Their interactions felt so cookie-cutter and bland that during arguments, I wanted to drive my head into the wall until I lost consciousness.

    The flaw is that the film never seems to kick it in any sort of gear, not second, not even first. It has a flimsy and limited script that lacks anything in the way of depth. It is little surprise when the actors or cinematography fails at truly capitalizing on the calamity found in the situation. It all screams run-of-the-mill and uninspired.

    The pacing and structure of the film doesn’t do it very much favors. It goes one direction, then the next, and then back to the old direction. In the end, it never actually gets anywhere. By the end, it definitely feels true and everything that happened in the film feels unfulfilled and irrelevant. Everything in the film seems beside the point and like it doesn’t even matter. I don’t care about the characters and besides the visuals, I have no reason to care about anything else.

    If there is anything worth praising, it’d be the special-effects. For a budget of only around ten or twenty million dollars, they did a lot with very little. I don’t think a lot of inspiration went into the design-work, at least not until the end, but aesthetically, it looks expensive and well-done. I only wish that more effort would have went into the rest of the film, which feels remarkably cheap and like a B-movie.

   In conclusion, the movie didn’t offer very much at all for me whatsoever. The special-effects might be enough for some, and are definitely worth some form of appreciation, but everything else fails. The story wasn’t given nearly enough thought, the acting is uninspired, the dialogue is just plain gross, and the film fails more than it succeeds.

    Let’s hope that they make some large improvements once it becomes time for the sequel.

    Thanks for reading…

Rating: – Bad (2.0 out of 5.0)

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