Skyline
‘Stay out of the light’ would be a good tagline for Skyline. Literally. Since we were invaded in 1996 by Independence Day, we’ve been waiting for a movie about life from another planet looking to eradicate the human race and when it seems like all hope is lost, we manage to overcome the odds and send those pesky extraterrestrials packing. With Skyline, there was potential, but it fell short. Very short.
It drags you in from the very start when the two main characters, Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and Elaine (Scottie Thompson), are woken up by strange lights that are descending from the heavens and making people disappear. Instantly you’re intrigued but instead of continuing on from there, it brings you back to earlier in the day and spends about twenty minutes explaining to you exactly why they’re in Los Angeles (why that mattered, I’m still trying to figure out) and trying to establish a rapport with the characters. Except all this does is lower your interest and it’s hard to raise it back up after that.
During the next thirty minutes after the lights appear, we learn that humans are being sucked up at an alarming rate into the massive spaceship and that those that are hiding are being hunted by aliens. This is the time when usually a hero, or several, would stand out but we didn’t seem to get any in the ones we were forced to watch as they spent their time creeping down halls and making sure the blinds were kept closed. All while you could hear gunfire coming from outside the apartment that they had chosen to hide in. There was a line in the movie which said ‘Don’t you get it? We’re at war!” I wish somebody had mentioned that fact to the director and the writer. If the characters weren’t going to be involved in it, then I would have at least liked to have seen it bar the few snippets through a telescope.
Because there was no moment of heroism by any of the characters, rooting for them to succeed, or even caring about them was hard. There was one moment in the movie where a hero did stand out and you got that sense of, ‘all of our hope rests on him if we’re going to get through this’. This came from a fighter jet, who we never see the pilot for and is only on screen for a minute, which weaves in and out of alien fire as it tries to shoot down the mother ship. The fact that the jet was the inspiring hero in Skyline says it all.
Without giving the end away, needless to say, it wasn’t the most inspiring. The very end is actually probably the best bit of the movie and no, not just because it was over, but unfortunately it leads absolutely nowhere. If it had come maybe thirty minutes earlier, maybe some of its potential might have been reached. However, it sets it up for the sequel which is currently in the works and, if it takes up directly from where this movie finished, then it has potential to be a blockbuster. However, potential is one thing. Living up to it is another.
Visually, Skyline was stunning. The cast, even though they were B-list actors, didn’t do a bad job so the blame for the disappointment that accompanies Skyline has to be laid at the feet of the writers and the director. For those that just want a good action movie, or some sort of action movie, or want to at least watch it so that they can watch the sequel when it is eventually released, then give it a go. For me, it gets a two out of five rating at best. One mark for managing to make it to cinema and a second for brief moments of entertainment and great visual effects.
