what you just described to me sounds like the pinnacle of So Bad Its Good. seriously you make this sound like its the new plan nine from outer space but what you get is one of the worse assylum ripoffs with a much better budget.
Well to me it sounds like So Bad Its Horrible. I'm glad I read the TV Tropes page for the movie (and this review) so I know never to waste my time watching it, not even for free.
Trust me, it's not So Bad Its Good. The laughing and groaning is from the film being awful, not Narm Charm. I honestly say, in all seriousness, that there is not one redeeming aspect to this movie. Not one. Fancy special-effects are in every movie nowadays and they're not good enough to justify this film.
And frankly if I save even one person from wasting their money on this film, then I'm glad.
Got dragged to this by my father and the only time I could express an emotion other than boredom was when the black guy's mistress got squished, resolving the Romantic Plot Tumor in about five minutes. I loled. Shitty movie; don't even bother to pirate.
I don't see the problem with this movie. Yes, it wasn't all that good, but it's still a fun. The aliens being after brains didn't create intrigue, it made them that much worse, because now we know exactly what they want from us. Perhaps the problem my fellow Tropers is that they have forgotten the MST 3 K Mantra. I'd recommend watching it, for the scenes of the military actually managing to successfully fight giant alien monsters and stuff if nothing else.
Don't see the problem? Well, aside from wasting a fair amount of money on taking a ladyfriend to see it (who argued for it because she likes 'aliens taking over the world' films), the most glaring problems:
1) Characters I didn't give a shit about. The only tolerable ones, to me, were Terry and Oliver because they were the only ones who didn't feel like holing up and hoping somebody fixed everything. 2) The lack of information about the aliens. I think that they were trying to do a Blue And Orange Morality thing a la District 9, but for one reason or another it just fell so flat. 3) How ridiculously over-the-top unkillable the aliens were. Again, the intention is clear - humanity is fucked, nothing we have is going to work - but somewhere between the nuke not working and the crashing drone hitting the giant gorilla-type creature in the face with no effect, the effect went from 'oh shit we're screwed' to 'wtf come on they're not all that'. 4) Plot threads left dangling. The use of the telescope as a recon system: good. The many heavy hints about the aliens not going over the water, the apartments being across the road from the marina, Terry having a boat of his own all ultimately not being used: bad. It makes it seem like the plan was originally for them to go out to sea but then got rewritten halfway through.
And Edranis: basically, you're encouraging people to watch the film for five minutes, if that, of the military attacking the aliens and getting smacked down for it. The MST 3 K Mantra is supposed to be for shows where you have little violations of logic every so often that you should relax and let go, not films that feel like a ninety-minute waste of time.
For me the ending was the worst, because, out of nowhere, it was promising. It was like the movie was giving me the finger. You've just sat through this awful, awful movie, and feel happy it's over, then they trow in something that actually looks kinda interesting, the whole human-brain-taking-over-alien-robot, it's not that original, but at least hasn't been done THAT much on movies, and then the credits roll, leaving you with the profound despair of What Could Have Been if they had made that movie, instead of the one they did. Hell, even if they had trimmed the excruciatingly boring, angst ridden, plot less mess most of the movie was, to about half an hour of plot setting, they could have then move on to the much more appealing story of the human-brained-robot fighting for his family (as narmtastic as that could have been); and may I say the robot was a much better actor than that soulless thing animating Jarrod? I could have even applied the MST 3K Mantra to those uber technological aliens needing organic brains as processors, if they had given me more about the implications of that plot point. Even the Hand Wave of "you can overcome the robot body aliens if you've been exposed long enough to the light and not assimilated" could have been forgivable. The movie it's not just bad, it sets, probably by accident, a couple of expectations, that it then crushes mercilessly, almost gleefully. If you're going to see it, make sure you download it for free, then watch the first scene, up until the "15 hours earlier" break, and then see the last 7-5 minutes, imagine the rest and go write a good fanfic about Robot!Jarrod fighting for the survival of his family inside the mothership.
I thought the movie was pretty neat from a visual standpoint, at least. Special effects weren't half-bad for the budget, the alien designs were sort of neat, etc. But I had the same problem with Skyline that I've had with almost every alien invasion movie ever made since the dawn of time: I hate every single one of our human protagonists. At first they're just assholes. Then when the alien invasion happens, they turn into hysterical, screaming, backstabbing assholes, and I just want the aliens to kill them faster so I won't have to listen to them sobbing and shrieking and yelling "no" in slow-motion anymore. I do not care about them enough to empathize with their plight. Halfway through basically any alien invasion movie, I inevitably think something along the lines of "So the entire world, billions of people, is under attack, and these guys are the ones we're watching?" Surely there are more interesting specimens of humanity out there. People with their heads screwed on straight, people with more interesting lives, hell, at the very least people we might like if we knew them. But it never happens. Ever.
Yet I would probably watch a sequel to Skyline, as non-speaking alien robot Jarrod is a much cooler character than obnoxious human Jarrod, and seeing him wreak havoc on aliens across LA would be enjoyable.
I felt as if this movie was pretty just an extended advertisement for the sequel. The movie itself is a rather boring standard alien plot, with everything pretty being done to death, and then, at the end, they show the human-brain-taking-over-an-alien thing, which would be quite interesting as it hasn't really been done that much. I'm far more interested than what the sequel will be like. If there is no sequel, then don't bother seeing this. If there is, then I'd recommend seeing this if only to just get some backstory.
So the movie wasn't the greatest, I didn't hate it though(I don't really hate anything I see) and yes their wasn't much of a plot, and the characters where dull but I could still see that their cared for etch other and that one blond woman did put out the cigar when she was told Elaine was pregnant.
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Probably one of the worst films I've ever seen
I'm really appalled at how awful this film is. How can you take what is a really awesome concept - hiding from the beautiful light that will be your doom - and 10 million dollars to make such a bad film?
The biggest and most immediately obvious flaw in this film is this; everyone is an unlikeable douchebag. Everyone. For some reason the directors thought to start the film at a LA party filled with shallow, sleazy, unlikeable jerks who spy on two men having oral sex like it's the most disgusting thing ever. If there is true horror in this film, it's the dawning realization that these people are the jerks we're supposed to care about for the next hour and a half.
Jarrod, Elaine and Oliver are the only remotely worthwhile characters in the film, but they're irritating and one-dimensional. We even have to suffer through the soap-opera wangst of Elaine's sudden unwanted pregnancy and Jarrod being a douchebag about it - because that's what you want to see in an alien invasion story, isn't it?
Not to mention that these awful characters have to act horribly written dialogue. The entire theatre was laughing, groaning or rolling at their eyes the entire way through, even through character deaths, because any immersion or believability was long destroyed. A script of non-stop Narm acted by bad characters is bad enough, but it doesn't stop there.
A good plot could save this, but the plot can't seem to make up its damn mind. Are the characters going to hide from the aliens or try to escape? The movie keeps trying these two options over and over again, accomplishing nothing but whittling down the cast (whom we don't care about) and broadcasting to the aliens that they're there. Eventually the plot moves towards the fatalistic as it becomes apparent that whatever they do is meaningless anyway.
Finally, the movie also copies ideas from many other alien movies, like ID 4 and War Of The Worlds, but doesn't develop the ideas properly. Like Cloverfield, they frame the film from the everyman's perspective, but then created intrigue when we saw what the aliens were doing to humans. Cloverfield was simple; there's a monster, it's smashing things. Here, the intelligent aliens are trying to do something but it's never explained, which made the movie deeply frustrating to watch.
In summary? Don't waste your money.