SKYLINES
(director/writer: Liam O ‘Donnell; screenwriters: story by characters by Joshua Cordes/story by Liam O’Donnell & Matthew E. Chausse; cinematographer: Alain Duplantier; editor: Barrett Heathcote; music: Ram Khatabakhsh; cast: Lindsey Morgan (Captain Rose Corley), Rhona Mitra (Dr. Mal), James Cosmo (Grant, narrator), Alexander Siddig (General Radford), Iéva Andrejevaite (Alexi), Jeremy Fitzgerald (Trent), Jonathan Howard (Leon), Daniel Bernhardt (Owens), Cha-Lee Yoon (Zhi), Naomi Tankel (Kate), Yayan Ruhian (Huana); Runtime: 113; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Colin Strause/Greg Strause/Liam O’Donnell/ Matthew E. Chausse; Vertical Entertainment/Apple TV; 2020-France-in English)
“If the viewer is not a demanding one or in need of surprises, then the competently made conventional sci-fi action pic should be entertaining enough.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Director Liam O’Donnell (“Portals “/”Beyond Skyline”) keeps the franchise running with this last film of the trilogy that promisingly started in 2010 with Skyline, but never met the high hopes for its start and ends a disappointing run in 2020. After the first venture bombed with most critics, it continued with Liam O’Donnell taking over the directing chores for Beyond Skyline (2017) and also its latest. It’s taken from a story by O’Donnell & Matthew E. Chausse. If the viewer is not a demanding one or in need of surprises, then the competently made conventional sci-fi action pic should be entertaining enough.
Skylines opens five years after the sequel and Captain Rose Corley (Lindsey Morgan) is in hiding near London, living in a survivors’ camp where rescued Pilots live in peace with the humans. There are billions of former humans, now sporting monstrous alien bodies, who have reintegrated into society. Strangely no one seems to bother about them. This is how things are now in the post-apocalyptic human world, as relayed to us by the narrator Grant (James Cosmo).
Rose (born while her mom was in alien captivity, was a human-alien hybrid) reunites with her local doctor friend Dr. Mal (Rhona Mitra) and learns that the Pilots are suffering from a mysterious disease that may reassert their alien programming, turning them again into indiscriminate human-killing machines. After learning that intel, Rose is snatched by a vague military organization led by General Radford (Alexander Siddig). It requires her mercenary help in their fight against the aliens. Thereby Rose and her team of elite soldiers sign on to go on a mission to save the world and the rest of mankind.
It’s now fifteen years after the alien attack, when General Radford informs us he’s after the core drive of the alien mothership, which warped elsewhere when Rose previously destroyed the ship. His staff hacker Zhi (Cha-Lee Yoon) has broken into the alien warp network, and can quickly get a ship to the source planet called Cobalt 1. This is all Radford needs to know as he sends Rose’s elite commando team there, in what he believes is the aliens’ home base. The General hopes both to retrieve the core drive — which will supposedly help power Earth’s three billion pilots and prevent them from going nutty — and meanwhile to hit the aliens hard on their home turf. As he must destroy them in 12 hours of else London will be kaput.
There you have the main plot for a film that has the Pilots trying to reassert their human side as they battle from within for supremacy of themselves, with their human brain red side taking on their “indiscriminate murder-monster” blue side. The story follows a by-the-book formula, one that imitates many other recent sci-fi versions used by other ‘save the world’ sci-fi films.
Though it never rises above a B-film, it’s watchable hokum and moderately entertaining.
Despite a low-budget, the brother visual artists, Colin & Greg Strause, the producers of this film and directors of the original Skyline, do an amazing job with the special effects.
REVIEWED ON 12/30/2020 GRADE: B-