Hola all. Massawyrm here.
You ever have one of those nights where two of your buddies show up at your house at 11:30, high as the day is long and insisting that they have to tell you something AWESOME? I don’t mean they’re giggling a lot; I mean they’ve smoked themselves retarded. And as they sit there on your couch, clearly off in a world much better than the one you’re still sober in, they begin talking about “the best movie ever made”, which happens to be locked right there in their heads. You know the one I’m talking about: the one with hot chicks, sports cars and brain eating alien invaders with giant toothy space vaginas for mouths. Yeah. And those two assholes riff on your couch for an hour and a half about how awesome their movie would be…if only someone would be smart enough to give them $10 Million to make it.
SKYLINE is what happens when someone shows up with a $10 million check and never lets these two geniuses sober up enough to realize just how fucking asinine their idea really is.
The Brothers Strauss are perhaps the single most inept filmmaking duo working in the studio system today. There isn’t a moment here they get right, not a single decision they make that doesn’t end ridiculously. In fact, there are three chief moments in the film where they seem to be making bold, inspired choices, only to completely fuck it up each time. The film opens with light descending from the skies – the alien invasion beginning right there in frame one. Wow, you think. They sure are dispensing with the bullshit. There’s no foreplay, no dicking around; just aliens showing up to kick some ass. And then, a moment later, just as things are getting really interesting, the movie jumps back 15 hours to give us 20 minutes of needless exposition (that never amounts to anything) about wafer thin characters we never are allowed to really give a shit about anyway.
Honestly, who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to make an alien invasion movie that, rather than following around scientists or soldiers or reporters or anyone interesting, follows around a group of AFFLICTION wearing, narcissistic, LA douchebags “living the life” off of new money they have no qualms about throwing around? These aren’t the types of people we want to connect with – these are the first ones to die in every other film EVER MADE. They are every bit as hollow, vapid and unlikable as they are when they are *supposed to be* hollow, vapid and unlikable; only here they get to be the protagonists. And the Brothers Strauss have no idea how to make them in any way endearing. They are thoroughly unlikable and just plain annoying from beginning to end. So when they start dropping off like flies, you not only aren’t invested in them, you kind of wish they would die off faster.
Now, I get what this movie was going for; it wants to be the story of inconsequential characters watching the Hollywood version of their story going on outside their window while they hole-up where it is relatively safe – ground tread much more competently by CLOVERFIELD and MONSTERS before it. But in order to make that kind of film work, you need to focus heavily upon the interpersonal relationships of the characters while watching what the mind altering trauma of a cataclysmic disaster does to those bonds. SKYLINE sets up needless drama that never pays off, each character being given weak hooks that they don’t live long enough to see anything interesting happen with.
And yet, nothing quite compares to the mind bogglingly awful ending that takes the film’s final, seemingly bold choice and skull fucks it into oblivion. This jaw dropping conclusion takes everything terrible that has come before it and transcends it to almost cartoonish levels of ridiculousness. It is an ending so bad, that it no doubt will become legend among film critics as one of the greatest dreadful endings of all time.
If there is one thing that can be said about SKYLINE, it is that it is never boring. Instead, it is consistently terrible throughout. The theater erupted into fits of explosive laughter at a number of inappropriate moments – up to and including the ending. Easily one of the most entertaining terrible movies in recent memory, this stands toe to toe with films like THE CORE, THE COVENANT, STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN LI and IN THE NAME OF THE KING as among one of the best experiences I’ve had watching an otherwise unwatchable film. With the right amount of beer and the right collection of friends, I expect this film will prove to be positively epic. But it is never good; just unintentionally funny.
For years, these two have blamed FOX for the travesty that was their AVP sequel, and I for one agree with them; after all, FOX gave these guys the keys to the franchise and the money to make it. Here they are claiming that love it or hate it, every shot is theirs – a very telling admission indeed. At least this one was funny to watch. I honestly don’t believe these two have a single decent movie in them; they screw up even the most rudimentary things. If these two ever work in cinema again, I hope it is being filmed as someone gives them a football and asks them to figure out how to fuck it.
Until next time friends,
Massawyrm
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