In 'Skyline,' only the effects are special
'This can't go on forever," one of a handful of survivors of an alien invasion reasons about a half hour into Skyline. And so it doesn't. Only about 92 minutes, as it turns out.
'This can't go on forever," one of a handful of survivors of an alien invasion reasons about a half hour into
Skyline.
And so it doesn't. Only about 92 minutes, as it turns out.
I would say this latest venture from "The Brothers Strause" is mercifully short. But mercy or pity don't figure into the ambitions of the siblings who shared credit (blame?) for Alien vs. Predator - Requiem.
This year's answer to Independence Day is a special-effects experiment in search of a movie, much like the far-lower-budget (and somewhat more effective) Monsters, now playing in a few theaters.
A bunch of attractive twentysomethings party all night and wake up to an unearthly light. Vaporish fireballs fall all over Los Angeles. And then people are sucked skyward into beast-ships where, we can assume, they're dinner guests - the main course. The wrinkle here is, you look into the light, you're drawn to it.
Eric Balfour of TV's 24 and Haven is Jarrod, prepared to stick like glue to his newly pregnant girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson, of TV's Trauma). They were visiting Terry, played by Donald Faison of TV's Scrubs.
You see a pattern here? Faison might have had the Will Smith role, that of the hip black guy who growls "Aw, hell no." But no. he only shoots his pistol at the beasties and yells "You want some'a that?" Or words to that effect.
The survivors of those first abductions bicker over whether to hunker down or make a run for it. Hours pass through time-lapse photography as they hide out. They watch a lot of what transpires through a spotting scope out the windows of Terry's penthouse.
That's indicative of why Skyline is an epic fail of a monster movie. There's no urgency, no close-contact immediacy to it. The group starts as a sextet, shrinks to a quartet, adds a couple of people, loses a couple more. And we don't care about any of them, don't identify with them, and don't try to reason their way out of this hopeless mess with them. That neck-up style of acting so suited to TV doesn't work in a movie where you're dealing with the unfathomable.
The characters, like the viewer, are simply bystanders - observers of a special-effects battle between Stealth fighter-bombers and Predator drones and alien squid ships and their offspring. Thus, Skyline plays like an effects guru's resume reel, not a movie.
Skyline * (out of four stars)
Directed by Colin Strause and Greg Strause. With Eric Balfour, Donald Faison, Scottie Thompson, and Crystal Reed. Distributed by Universal Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 32 mins.
Parent's guide: PG-13 (intense sci-fi action, violence, profanity, and brief sexual content)
Playing at: area theatersEndText