Skyline

The Brothers Strause are like two young children trying to learn the alphabet. Upon introduction to the new letters they had to memorise off by heart, they curiously looked at the differently shaped symbols with large, crossed eyes, and blew some green bubbles through their noses while mindlessly giggling away. They failed, and the result was the revolting anal wind entitled Alien vs. Predator: Requiem.

Now three years older, they're attempting to feed their brains with knowledge of the alphabet once again. This time, they're taking more of an interest in its ways, stutteringly sounding out the first few of the 26 letters. "Ah, bi, ki, di, eh, fi, gi," they say. As you can see, they're still not quite there yet; but they're getting better. In time, one hopes they shall improve even more.

Childish joking aside, the sibling directors' newest feature is another blunderous sci-fi actioner with elements of horror slothfully thrown in. Skyline may not be as traumatisingly, eye-gougingly ghastly as the horrendously detestable AVP:R, but that really is not saying too much in their latest flick's favour.

The film bravely wastes absolutely no time, starting at the exact moment an alien invasion begins. Beautiful, bright blue rays of light descend from the heavens above and land amongst the high-rises of Los Angeles. Jarrod (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Eric Balfour, who looks like a half-human, half-goat) wakes up in an apartment complex in the middle of the night to find himself entranced by the blinding light glowing through the window. His pupils turn white, his face goes all veiny, and his legs won't stop taking him toward the shining glare. He's like a moth on heroin.

Backtrack to 15 hours earlier, and Jarrod is on a plane with his girlfriend, Elaine (Trauma's Scottie Thompson). They're in town visiting Jarrod's best friend, Terry (Scrubs' Donald Faison), for his birthday bash in his L.A. apartment. They drink, they dance, they argue, they watch two gay guys have sex through a telescope, Elaine reveals she's pregnant, and they go off to bed.

Following this badly written episode of 90210, we're back at the film's opening, with the party-people gawking outside at the mysterious glimmers situated on the streets below. Turns out (duh) Earth is being taken over by extraterrestrials, which our clueless heroes find out when they watch hundreds of helpless people being vacuumed up into the air and into a vast spacecraft hovering above the city.

Our main characters understandably begin to panic, thinking up plans of what the hell they should do. Meanwhile, outside; big, alien, machine-like organisms are searching through buildings for living humans to do what they wish to them -- which looks to be consuming their brains. Y'know, like zombies. Zombies from outer-space.

Taking inspiration -- cough, rip-off, cough -- from War of the Worlds, Independence Day and, most recently, District 9, Skyline is a low-budget, absurdly banal screw-up. Made for reportedly only $10 million, its limited money count doesn't excuse how badly handled this independent sci-fi turd is.

The characters consist of main guy, black guy, blonde bimbo, pregnant girl, and douchebag. The script by Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell doesn't even make an attempt at developing the terrified dim-wits, nor making them likable, or the slightest bit memorable. All played without a speck of charm by a TV-cameo cast (aside from a competent Faison), they may as well not even be there, as they're just a distraction from the dazzling special effects.

True, the alien effects are mighty impressive for a film of this budget, I'll hesitantly give Skyline that through gritted teeth. Directors Greg and Colin Strause are both visual effects artists (having previously worked on Avatar and 2012), so it's not surprising that most of the "effort" has been shoved into making the interstellar foes look good.

Their designs stretch from "Hey, nice" to "OMG, Matrix knock-off." The huge, daunting mother ship in the sky hauntingly watches over the city. The tall, creature-like robots climb up buildings and grab rescuing helicopters. And the probing, street-searching machines with long, black tentacles look 100% identical to the Sentinels from the Matrix trilogy. Seriously, they're exactly the same.

Problem is that such little attention has been given to the rationale of the characters' actions that the occasionally enjoyable use of CGI is rendered completely and utterly redundant. Almost everything the characters do is either laughably illogical or twistingly contrived to set up for an action sequence, leaving me shaking my head in disbelief at how poorly written they are.

Every time the film surprisingly manages to reach a degree of mild entertainment value, some abominable scene is guaranteed to be right round the corner to kick the preceding sequence right in the testicles. There were actually moments I guiltily enjoyed, maybe even found "good", but these thoughts were quickly abducted by the nefarious schemes of the evil, amateur moviemakers.

And then there's the film's conclusion. Well, all I can say is that it I couldn't help but damn near laugh my ass off at the cheesiness of it all, and how much it leaves a sickening taste in one's mouth as the film's final note.

With such a god-awful script and stale acting devoid of any sense of magnetism, Skyline didn't stand a chance. It may have all the looks of a big-budget, action-packed extravaganza, but contains the mind of a testosterone-filled, 12-year-old schoolboy. The Brothers Strause, please stick to the visual effects industry, and leave the filmmaking to the filmmakers.

3/10