Mark Reviews Movies: SKYLINES

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 17, 2020

It began in 2010 with Skyline, which seemed more like a showcase reel for the filmmakers' visual effects company than a fully formed movie, and somehow now continues with a second sequel. Skylines is the third installment in a series that, even now, seems unlikely. What more, really, could be made of the story of an alien invasion, seen primarily from within and atop a Los Angeles apartment building?

Beyond Skyline, the first sequel, possessed some unexpected answers, namely in turning the simple setup of the first movie into a whole mythology of sorts, while the story hopped the globe and danced around assorted genres. It was a better movie than its predecessor, for sure—more daring in being intentionally and knowingly silly.

The tone of the previous entry continues with returning writer/director Liam O'Donnell's new sequel (He co-wrote the first movie and wrote and directed the previous one). This one expands the mythology of the alien invaders far less than the first sequel, but its scope is definitely a bit more ambitious. This one isn't about aliens invading Earth. That already has been dealt with, apparently, so now it's time for the Earthlings, with a couple of alien allies, to invade the invaders' home world.

It's a clever idea, presented with some humor and plenty of action by O'Donnell. The movie also feels a bit limited—both within its own parameters and in comparison to just how much its immediate predecessor attempted to do. The first sequel may not have set a high bar, but it definitely set a higher bar than this installment can clear.

Those who missed or forgot the first two movies get a quick recap at the start of this one. Beginning with the story of what happened after the second movie's cliffhanger ending, Rose (Lindsey Morgan), who was born on an alien spaceship and underwent accelerated growth due to her evolved genetics (Even the opening narration admits that all of this starts to get "complicated"), led an attack on the alien ships near Earth. She momentarily froze before destroying the alien's main ship, resulting in the deaths of some resistance fighters in the crossfire.

Five years after that, Rose has disappeared in shame for winning the fight but losing thousands of her soldiers. That doesn't last long. A virus has emerged amidst the "pilots," aliens that possess the consciousness of humans whose brains were implanted into bio-mechanical vessels (Okay, all of this is actually pretty complicated for the uninitiated). The disease is causing the pilots to return to their alien programming—hostile toward humans, in other words.

In London, Rose is detained and brought to the resistance higher-up General Radford (Alexander Siddig) with a mission: Go to the aliens' planet to retrieve a power source that can stop the virus. Along for the trek are her escort Leon (Jonathan Howard), sharpshooter Owens (Daniel Bernhardt), her adoptive brother and alien pilot Trent (Jeremy Fitzgerald, in a rubber suit), and a few others who aren't quite as important for the story.

The rest of the story is mostly an excuse to show off the alien home world (named Cobalt, for the blue hue of everything on it) and give our heroes plenty of reasons to shoot (guns, alien technology, and even Rose's arm, which transforms into a kind of blaster ray) and fight assorted aliens. The action sequences go from fairly routine (The team encounters a bunch of mutated aliens, which have some kind of super-camouflage, in a dark cavern, where they have to fight their way against a horde of nearly and then not-at-all invisible enemies) to bigger, far and intentionally sillier ones.

Give credit where it's due: O'Donnell isn't afraid to embrace how ridiculous some—okay, most—of this is, beyond the constant subtitled joking of smart-ass Trent. Do we need fight sequences between two aliens? No, we don't, but O'Donnell has these actors in bulky, restrictive rubber suits, lumbering through the scenery. Why shouldn't he give us a couple of scenes of hand-to-hand and wrist-blade-to-wrist-blade combat in the process? Do we need Rose and one of her allies, piloting a "tanker" of an alien machine, leaping across exploding rubble and into space? If it's silly enough, O'Donnell is willing to include it.

There is a bit to admire here, simply because O'Donnell knows not to take this material too seriously. That philosophy does fall apart a bit too much, perhaps, especially within a subplot involving a doctor (played by Rhona Mitra) trying to come up with a cure to the disease transforming the aliens (All of that feels completely unnecessary, except to give us another location where some climactic fighting can happen—and a "special appearance" from one of the surprise cast members from the previous movie).

The movie hits in some ways—the tone, for the most part, and visual effects that complement the B-movie intentions—and misses in others—that subplot and how the barebones plot limits how much O'Donnell can attempt. Skylines does promise a fourth entry, and with a series as unexpected as this one, maybe that one will get it right.

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