On the couch

Skyline looks like a particularly well-made and awesome aftershave commercial. That may be the meanest and nicest thing that can be said for the Brothers Strause sophomore feature, their follow up to the financially successful but critically panned Alien vs Predator: Requiem.
A special-effects heavy hotch-potch of a number of other, better films, everything, from the story to the monsters to some of the flashy set pieces, will strike anyone familiar with the last decade’s summer blockbusters as, well, familiar.
On paper, of course, it probably sounded an awful lot smarter. Instead of doing an alien invasion flick where the world (and the main characters) comes together to kick the UFOs’ asses or even one where the big action occurs off-screen and the story focuses on “the little people” just trying to survive and keep their family together (The War of the Worlds), Skyline puts its central characters in a big, fancy apartment in a block and leaves them there. There’s a whole lot of danger outside the front door and they haven’t a hope of escaping. Let the paranoia and shut-in syndrome fun commence!
Adrian Brody’s slightly uglier, younger brother Eric Balfour stars as Jerrod, a struggling artist heading to LA with his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thomas) for the birthday of childhood friend and now Very Important Person in films, Terry (Donald Faison). After a night of partying and shocking revelations the gang are woken up to discover one of their mates being sucked out the window by an alien death ray and that the world, or LA anyway, is being attacked by aliens.
Instead of doing what most self-respecting action heroes do – look noble and then arm themselves with something and take the fight to the evil invader – the cast of Skyline does what many of us would do: pull the blinds down, get scared and get in an argument about whether running away or staying put and hiding is a better course of action.
When it quickly becomes clear that neither the cast nor the script are up to a task of providing a tense, claustrophobic drama set on the backdrop of an unjustified invasion of the US, the aforementioned uncommon common sense is tossed out the window in favour of something that can better show off the Brothers Strause’s visual and special effects prowess. To sadly predictable effect.
It’s not all derivative nonsense though. The alien drones (that look like the sentinel from The Matrix) and the big building crushing monsters (that look just like the thingy from Cloverfield) shine a blue light at their prospective prey that paralyses them and makes their skin and eyes look all veiny and evil (like Willow when she turned evil in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) before their brains are sucked out which looks very cool.
There’s also a pleasing B-movie feel about it (well, pleasing for anyone that likes watching the movies on the Sy-Fy channel) and the final third of the flick, as well as the sequel-baiting ending, are surprisingly satisfying.
Balfour (despite the earlier Brody-based jibe) is a competant leading man. He doesn’t look like a square-jawed Tom Cruise-type hero and doesn’t act like one either. This is a good thing. However, Donald Faison (Turk from Scrubs) does little more than play a less whipped version of his TV character.
More impressive is David Zayas, more familiar to most from roles in OZ and Dexter, who shows up to provide substance to a cast and film that is for the most part chronically insubstantial.
While it deserves five stars for effort – the whole flim reportedly cost $10million and looks pretty damn good – Skyline ends up being a little bit like one of those composite pictures published in film magazines that ask you which bit of the image refers to what movie.
Only far more time consuming and not that much fun.