SKYLINE

Directors: Colin and Greg Strause

Starring: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, David Zayas, Donald Faison

IT CAN’T be a good sign if you sit through all the credits to see if there’s some sort of extra bit of the film that might explain the ending you’ve just witnessed - there wasn’t.

So, unless there’s a sequel, you can expect to be left somewhat up in the air (quite literally) at the end of Skyline.

Leaving the ending to one side, Skyline should have been a very good movie. The plot is sound enough - aliens arrive in their enormous spacecrafts and start beaming up people who are ‘captured’ by a blue light emitted. The main action revolves round a group of people in a high-rise apartment who attempt to stay alive against amazing odds and who witness the battle against these unwelcome visitors.

The problem is in the details, though. The main characters seemed pretty two dimensional and I was beginning to root for the aliens by the end.

Balfour plays the lead (Jarrod) and Faison (Turk in the TV series Scrubs) is his mate Terry, but Scottie Thompson (Jarrod’s girlfriend) is the only one with a decent character to portray, though even she is less than impressive by the end.

The CGI is the best bit of the film, with some excellent air battles and rampaging monsters, though a few of the aliens do act like demented dogs rushing round the sidewalks.

But too often you are left asking questions that simply aren’t answered satisfactorily, such as why choose the noisiest sports car possible if you are trying to escape a building quietly so the aliens don’t hear you. If you’ve seen the trailer you know what happens.

three out of five stars

Steve Payne