Skyline
2010
*½
Director: The Brothers Strause
Cast: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, Crystal Reed, David Zayas, Donald Faison, Neil Hopkins, J. Paul Boehmer
Jarrod and his girfriend Elaine travel to a birthday party in Los Angeles. The birthday boy is caught cheating, Jarrod gets a contentious job offer, and Elaine reveals that she's pregnant. Only the last part matters when hypnotic blue light beams appear in the skyline during the night. By the morning, the city is under a full-fledged alien attack. The second time directors Greg and Colin Strause have a background in special effects, and their ambition here doesn't extend beyond creating a good looking science fiction blockbuster on a shoestring budget. They succeed in that part but only because they've pinched a penny by recycling the alien designs from District 9 and War of the Worlds. The clichéd and derivative script by Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell steals freely from the films above and from the likes of Cloverfield, Independence Day, and The Matrix. The story is centred around a group of uninteresting 20-somethings who bicker whether they should hide inside the highrise or try their luck on the outside. The aliens feast on the human brain but it doesn't seem like they would get their stomachs full with this dumb lot. The film is not unbearably awful, it is just boringly unoriginal.
