MOVIE REVIEW: Skyline

Guest blogger Liz Parker is back from an advance screening of "Skyline".  Does this alien flick thrill or just alienate?  Let's read what Liz thinks....


It's lucky I didn't write this review last night, because I was so tired from doing a double-header of both "Burlesque" (at 7 p.m.) and "Skyline" (at 11 p.m.) that I might have given my synopsis of "Skyline" as "Cher and Christina Aguilera get abducted by aliens in L.A." (thus combining the two movies). However, I am now rested and coherent, and I can say that although "Skyline" was better than I thought it would be, it was ultimately not fulfilling, and left many questions unanswered at the end.

Jarrod (Eric Balfour, TV's "Haven,") and his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson, TV's "Trauma") are going to L.A. for the weekend to visit his old friend Terry (Donald Faison, TV's "Scrubs"). The first day they are there, they have a huge party at his luxury apartment, and then around 4 a.m. the next morning, they are awakened by strange lights. Jarrod is drawn to the lights and almost gets sucked in by them, until Terry drags him back inside. By the time another of their friends "disappears" into the lights, they are thoroughly freaked out, and no one can figure out what is going on, except that there has been an invasion of some kind.

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No, don't see this film. There were definitely things I liked about this movie, but ultimately there were more things that I did not. I'm a big "Scrubs" fan so it was nice to see Donald Faison on the big screen, and I recognized Eric Balfour from "24" and Donald's girlfriend, played by Brittany Daniel, from the old TV show "Sweet Valley High." The movie was really cheesy, however (very soap opera-esque), and you could practically hear "Twilight Zone" music when the aliens/machines were eating everyone. The plot was interesting - why are these aliens here, for example, and what do they want with us? - but I thought that questions such as those would be answered in the end, and instead the ending left the audience with no explanation whatsoever. Before its ending, I would have given the film a "Maybe" - so if you can deal with "the unknown," so to speak, perhaps you will like this movie - and I had heard that the film was on a "tight" budget, about $10 million, but that still doesn't make up for its cheesiness and general lack of plot. The movie clocks in at an hour and a half, and for most of its runtime it did hold my attention; however, once I learned that we would not be getting any answers, I was thoroughly disappointed.

"Skyline" opens in theaters today Friday, November 12th...



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Liz Parker is a 2009 graduate of the University of Michigan. She currently works as an Assistant Medical Editor for a pathology website. Visit her at her movie blog Yes/No Films