Skyline

The morning after a birthday party held in downtown Los Angeles is the stuff of comic movie legend, but Skyline gives it a rather unusual twist. Jarrod (Balfour) and his girlfriend Elaine (Thompson) are woken not by the police or a drunken party-goer, but by strange blue shafts of light bursting from the sky above LA. The source of the beams is revealed to be alien spacecrafts that are hovering above Earth. Jarrod is initially drawn to the light, yet the partiers soon realise that the lights entrance humans like moths who are then sucked up into the sky. Jarrod, Elaine, birthday boy Terry (Faison) and Terry’s girlfriend Candice (Brittany Daniel) must decide what course of action to take to avoid the incoming alien invaders. What follows is a fast paced series of events in which the four main characters desperately try to survive.

This film was made with the involvement of the visual effects team behind recent blockbusters such as Avatar and 2012, films with visual effects that have been rated as some of the best of all time. Skyline is no different, with top quality effects and creative design. The movie is a darker, perhaps more realistic version of the “traditional” sci-fi alien invasion movie; it focuses on a group of ordinary people who are fighting to survive in a world that suddenly they know nothing about. Skyline has been compared to District 9 and even the legendary Independence Day but manages to avoid trite, tired sci-fi movie clichés. Although the story may not be the tightest around, the plot is thrilling and captivates the audience with plenty of action and destruction. If what you want from a film is incredibly well designed aliens smashing through Los Angeles and killing hundreds of humans, then Skyline is a must see.

Charlotte Dart