Enjoy the trailers. Enjoy imagining that Skyline is a good movie, because its trailers are good. And leave it there...

There's a certain myopia in breaking into Buckingham Palace just to steal the pots and pans from the kitchen. It may make the heist cost-effective, but isn't it rather missing the point?

Likewise have the Brothers Strause failed once again to understand what it is about 'stealing' that makes Tarantino, Romero and numerous other Hollywood luminaries so brilliant at it in comparison to the ham-fisted larceny on display in Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem (2008) and Skyline.

The mind more than boggles at the level of directorial insensitivity that's able to take themes, imagery and scenarios from the likes of Night Of The Living Dead, Cloverfield, The Matrix, District 9, War Of The Worlds and Independence Day and turn it all into an inadequately funded version of Entourage Meets 'V'.

Elaine (Scottie Thompson) and Jarrod (Eric Balfour) are pregnant, though Jarrod doesn't know it as he whisks his girlfriend to the L.A. birthday celebrations of his best friend Terry (Donald Faison). Little do they know - -

Oh I can't. I just can't. Why should I put more effort into detailing the plot than writers Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell did into stewing it up from old stock without adding any tantalising new ingredients?

A bunch of pretty young people you won't care one whit about find themselves holed up in a dismally generic L.A. high-rise whilst alien invaders take over the planet around them by landing a series of spooky light-bombs that zombify humans and make them walk into the Matrix-style meat-scoops that descend from CGI ships resembling cast-offs from Deep Space 9.

The Brothers Strause can do loads of their own visual effects to make the trailers look epic, but even they can't fill an entire movie with so-so CGI on the meagre budget that Skyline seems to have. Therefore once you've bought your ticket, you'll find yourself mostly holed-up with this charmless bunch of youngsters as they bicker boringly and endlessly until you're praying for the alien invaders to scoop up what few brains they have and try to get some scant nourishment out of them.

David Zayas turns up a bit later to no particular effect as the building's concierge, but by this time Dexter fans will be on their knees in gratitude that someone is appearing in this movie that they might be able to care about. It is, sadly, a forlorn hope.

The talk goes on, the bickering goes on, and the 1999-era CGI continues to zip in and out as the alien craft hover around and send flying jellyfish with vagina-like mouths out to suck brains from recalcitrant humans trying to avoid being harvested.

Our heroes try to get out of the building but are stopped by the limited budget, and finally this horrendous mess of a film goes for the old double-ending, starting off with a stab at Titanic and finishing with an equally ineffective stab at District 9. The end credits roll to the ear-scratching cacophony of horrible thrash-metal music, and you leave, wondering why you ever gave the Strauses another chance after the debacle of AVP: Requiem. Then you think of how David Fincher was screwed by Fox on Alien 3, and how he redeemed himself from that problem-bestrewn movie time and time again in the years that followed. That's why you wanted to believe. That, and the fact that District 9 proved to be such a genial and interesting movie despite bearing the same inconography as Independence Day and now, Skyline.

I have not given any review a 1-star rating in years, but since I actually paid to see this movie, all bets are off. This is the worst outing, alien-invasion or otherwise, that I have seen in a cinema since Dreamcatcher in 2002. There are no future Finchers in the Strause family as far as I can tell; just a hollow and raw ability to loosen a producer's check-book by name-checking movies that the brothers have inadequate talent to imitate.

Skyline is on general release in the UK.

See also:

Skyline DVD Review

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