Skyline [Blu-ray]

This film is completely different from indepance day etc. It's a new take on alien invasion movies and I do rather like it. It's not amazing but is noway a diabolical film which some people are making out to be. The only downer is indeed the ending however. Not that great. If the ending was much better this would be 4 stars

I appreciate everything about film from the cinematograpy to the directing; and I never cease to be amazed by what the people who make films can achieve.

Skyline is no exception to this. For anyone who doesn't know: this film was made on a very tiny budget, by current standards. It cost only $500,000 to film and a further $10,000,000 for special effects - with the average blockbuster costing in the region of £150-£200 million this was no small achievement.

I read the reviews here and on other sites and went into this film with a lot of reservations; fully expecting to be sorely disappointed.

I wasn't.

Instead I was totally engrossed from start to finish.

The acting was good, the effects were incredible (especially given the pitifully small budget) and the storyline thrilling. There's a definite sense of real-people-in-an-unimaginable-situation going on (partly due to the cast being made up of relative unknowns).

Now before you totally disregard my thoughts here's a few examples of films I love/hate:
Love: The King's Speech, King Kong (all versions), Schindler's LIst, District 9, Anything Disney, Color Purple, Saw franchise
Hate: Knocked Up, The Flintstone's Movie, Invasion: The Beginning, Cloverfield, Last Exorcism, Resevoir Dogs

Maybe the above will help you to realise that I don't love everything I watch. But, for Skyline to be getting similar reviews as the utterly rubbish Last Exorcism is totally unfair.

Yes, it has a fairly open ending that some viewers may find frustrating (never have a problem with these myself as I can always decide for myself what happened next). Also, some story elements were not explained (see above bracketed statement).

Maybe other viewers were expecting more Independence Day type action. Maybe they wanted known stars. Maybe they wanted to be spoon-fed plot and happy ending? Maybe they didn't understand the film?....or maybe...just maybe we all have different taste in movies and there will always be people to hate or love any given film. Hell, I read a review from someone saying that Schindler's List was boring rubbish, badly acted and badly directed. That person deserves to be locked up in my opinion.
But that's all this review is...my opinion.

Maybe it helped that I went into this film with very low expectations and subsequently was pleasantly surprised. Maybe I'm just a bad critic I don't know....what I DO know is that I'm looking forward to Skyline 2, which is apparently coming out in 2012!

This is one of those films that is incredibly difficult to rate. As you will be aware, and having been made abundantly clear from other reviews; the script in this film is terrible. There is no denying that fact, but going into this film with that knowledge increases the entertainment to no end.

This is a film that that is greater than the sum of its parts in my opinion. A bad script, and by extension bad acting actually do little to harm it. In fact the worst (though still enjoyable) parts of this film are the most derivative scenes, of which there are plenty. War of the Worlds and Independence Day are probably the most plagiarised, but any sci-fi afficianado will spot plenty of stolen scenes.

I suppose what really redeemed this film was the action scenes, as well as the most engaging alien threat committed to film since the aforementioned War of the Worlds remake. Make no mistake, the aliens are not as threatening or original as can be found elsewhere, but they do have a sense of overwhelming doom that most end of the world films really fail to convey.

In the end, the relatively small budget is evident in the acting and not the action, and in reaching for the sky and coming up short this ambitious film is destined to garner bad reviews and a lot of hate, but will be considered a flawed gem by a cult following. And rightly so, as with the right mindset this is an enjoyable action flick that is easy on the brain (Unless you happen to star in the film. Watch it, you'll see what I mean).