***Aliens attack Earth and seek to SUCK YOUR BRAINS OUT***

A couple (Eric Balfour & Scottie Thompson) visits some friends in Los Angeles when aliens attack the city and they hold up in a posh apartment complex. The other protagonists are played by Brittany Daniel, Donald Faison, Crystal Reed and David Zayas.

"Skyline" (2010) combines elements of other Alien invasion flicks like “Independence Day” (1996), “Battle: Los Angeles” (2011), “Cloverfield” (2008) and “War of the Worlds” (1953/2005) with an ending reminiscent of the same in “Night Skies” (2007). The people-snatching aspect recalls “The Forgotten” (2004).

The director brothers are visual effects designers who were working on the blockbuster “Battle: Los Angeles” while making this indie, which only cost about $10 million. Sony Pictures sued, but the case was later dropped. It must’ve scared the directors because they haven’t returned to directing since (as of this writing) even though “Skyline” made $21 million domestically and $78 million worldwide, which led to the sequel “Beyond Skyline” (2017) by other filmmakers.

Being made by effects experts, it’s not surprising that the F/X in “Skyline” are top-of-the-line. Some of the aliens or crafts look like they were modeled after sea creatures, like octopi and jelly fish. There are also probing tentacles, as seen in “War of the Worlds.” Meanwhile the main vessels and some of the aliens are similar to those in “Independence Day.”

Unfortunately, there’s not enough human interest and the story is too one-dimensional to be overly gripping, for me anyway. Still, this is a grave, tense account of what a malevolent alien invasion might be like. It lacks the lighter side of “Independence Day” and other eye-rolling aspects (e.g. the pro-American angle), but “ID” had more human interest and a plot with a much larger scope. This one amounts to: Aliens attack earth and snatch victims, the end. Yet it’s well done for what it is.

The film runs 1 hour, 32 minutes and was shot in Los Angeles with shots of New York City, London and Hong Kong at the end.

GRADE: B-

The story does unfold slowly, but it was far from boring (in my opinion).
I'm not sure why they started off with backstory and explaining why the two main characters were at the apartment block. It didn't help the story.

I thought the story was well presented and from a Sci-Fi perspective was plausible.
The production values were very high with excellent special effects. The feel of the movie was very real and you felt what the characters would be feeling... so I guess this means the acting was believable.

At no time did I need to suspend my disbelief.
To me, that is the mark of a good Sci-Fi movie.

You can just imagine the chaos that is occurring during Skyline's alien invasion/giant monster attack. Unfortunately, imagining is all you can do because our point of view is from inside a penthouse with the blinds drawn. Much of the time we are shown too much in current movies. Leaving things to the imagination is perfectly acceptable, but not when the selling point is very good special effects. What little of the invasion we do see is very ominous. So why do we have to spend 90% of the run time in an apartment building with paper thin characters? I guess it has to be the director's attempt to make us like the cast enough to care that the world is toast. But the acting is so bad and so generic that I was pulling for the aliens to wipe them out. It was seriously annoying watching this movie knowing that the world is being conquered by an impressive alien force and I have to spend all of my time stuck in a room with stupid cliched twenty-somethings.

I would rate this movie even worse but I can't get over the crazy dark ending. It's just not right to spoil it here, though. It's so jaw-droppingly out of left field that it almost made the movie worth watching.

The ending could maybe have been engaging if it made sense, but even putting the best possible spin on _Skyline_, it still repeatedly commits the cardinal sin of the entertainment industry: Being boring.

_Final rating:★½: - Boring/disappointing. Avoid where possible._