SKYLINE (2010) - Review

The Strause Brothers are slowly building a sort of dubious fame in Hollywood. With both "Skyline" and "Alien versus Predator 2" they have proved that they are technically competent filmmakers (they work in the visual effects business), but when it comes to what is usually known as serious filmmaking, they just can't seem to keep up with the competition.

The movie deals with a group of people trapped in a luxury apartment building during an alien invasion. The aliens shoot down blue lights that attract people and do some funky stuff do their skin, then suck them up to their complicated looking ships. Who the aforementioned people are ? It does not matter. They're good for just two things : close-ups and running from CGI aliens.

The Brothers do a neat job with the visual effects, which, for a minuscule budget of 10 million dolars, look amazing. There were moments when I was just admiring the quality of the 3D rendering rather than actually caring about what's happening. There really isn't much else to enjoy. The acting is wooden, the dialogue horrible and the characters unbearable, flat and stupid. I was rooting for the aliens to eviscerate the crap out of them, but this is just a PG-13 movie. And talking about the aliens, they're just so over-designed. They look nothing like creatures that could exist in a normal universe where practicality reigns, and more like complex design choices. Still, they're on the better side of this movie.

Cliches abound and cheesiness prevails. The visual effects are good enough to spark some fanboy fervor in small pockets of the world's population, but the rest is just garbage that tries too hard to be nothing of relevance. I'm sure the Strause brothers are great at visual effects, but they should get some decent writers and some better actors, or else they'll get an ugly nickname like "the Boll Brothers". I'm sure Uwe needs some company.