Skyline – Brilliant Special Effects Sci-Fi Film
Director: Colin Strause, Greg Strause
Writer: Joshua Cordes, Liam O’Donnell (Screenplay)
Starring: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, Crystal Reed, Neil Hopkins, David Zayas, Donald Faison
Plot: Strange lights descend on the city of Los Angeles, drawing people outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the Earth.
Tagline – Soon, our first encounter will become our last stand.
Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Skyline starts when Jarrod (Balfour) and his girlfriend Elaine (Thompson) head to LA to celebrate with Jarrod’s buddy Terry (Faison). Jarrod learns that Elaine is pregnant and that Terry is planning on offering him a role in LA, leaving him with a big life choice.
That choice will be put on hold when an alien attack happens, one with beaming lights that start to take control of people, the group must think of a way to escape the aliens, with rising tensions as they looks to solve the problem.
Thoughts on Skyline
Characters & Performances – The characters in this film are pretty thin when we look at them. We have Jarrod who is a brilliant mind that is left in a position of learning he is about to become a father and might need to be moving to start a dream career, who was already facing a hard decision before the alien invasion. He might well be quick thinking in his approach, he seems to be the only character that gets a deeper storyline than, girlfriend. Eric Balfour does well with the role that could have seen him break out more in the action genre. Elaine is the newly pregnant girlfriend that hasn’t seen this side of his life before, she is just dealing with the news herself and what it might mean for her own future too. Scottie Thompson does the best she can in this role without having much to work with. The characters really do take second fiddle in this film, which shines on the special effects.
Story – The story here follows a group of friends in LA that find themselves in the middle of an alien invasion, one that will see the aliens dominate the major cities of the world, taking the humans, we only follow a few people as they look to survive. This does keep the story simple, with the fight to survive against technologically advanced aliens being all we need to follow. We go through the typical routine of thinking of ideas to survive without getting anything original, but again this is about the special effects.
Themes – Skyline is a sci-fi horror that involves an alien invasion, the strongest part as you might have read already, is the special effects, they look amazing with the unique for the time creations of what the aliens are looking like and attacking. The lighting gives us the blinding feeling of when they are around which elevates this above so many films trying to make an impact in this world.
Skyline is a film that is carried by the excellent special effects, which all look brilliant to witness the creation.