Skyline (2010)

Skyline seems to be a very polarizing film. You either love it for what it is, or hate it for what it's not. It's filmed similar to Syfy's Sancturary, only with slightly more money and time since it's a major motion picture. The Red Camera and Digital Effects really are the New Hot. Script aside, this shows exactly what you can do with a "shoestring" budget of $10 Mil. It doubled it's modest budget in the theaters and that's not including PPV and Home Video sales.

The story isn't that original, nor does it really explain too much. I know a lot of folks who don't care for this type of story telling, but my question has always been what are the realistic chances of you running into a nuclear physicist who just happens to know how to defeat the invading aliens and knows all about them because he's had a chance to study them and provides all the backstory the audience needs to further the story? I'd say pretty damned slim. Instead you have a handful of average people who happen to survive the first wave of an invasion and have no idea what's going on.

The survivors include Eric Balfour, Donald Faison and David Zayas. Oh and some women. We find out early on that if you look into the light of the aliens, you get sucked away. It's nasty. There are many impressive scenes of what these aliens look like and what they can do to our planet. Pretty sure the entire budget went to the rental of the Red and the CGI work. We do find out what the aliens are after and it kind of all makes sense until the very end. The last five minutes of the film turn into the opening segment of a video game. Seriously I was expecting  the next thing I saw to be a HUD and a control scheme tutorial.

I really wanted to like the movie. I AM impressed with the CGi work and the details. But the writing just completely petered out at the last minute. It really felt they wrote themselves into a corner and just went for broke. The problem is that there is no explanation of to how it happens and sets itself up for another film just for the hell of it.

I don't hate it for what it's not, but it does stand a testament to what could have been. If you can forgive the ending, the rest of the movie doesn't suck.


***Eye Candy***
Personally, the fact that Eric Balfour and David Zayas share the screen in this one makes it well above average. Together they are like my Frosted Mini Wheats of Man Candy. The Bear in me likes him some David Zayas (Ay Papi!), but The Gay Man in me loves him some Eric Balfour. Eric does pull his shirt up a few times and both generally look amazing when they are all sweaty and stuff, but there's no nudity or lingering shots of either. They can, however, be found elsewhere as both actors have shown a fair amount of skin in other roles.