Review of Skyline (2010) by Shiira — 18 Nov 2010

In the Sparks song "Cool Places"(an ode to Los Angeles), which featured Jane Wiedlin on vocals, Ron Mael and the ex-Go-Go's bassist sang about going to these cool places and never wanting to "cool down, cool down, cool, cool, cool.

" After all, Los Angeles is a town unlike any other. It's not Ontario, that's for sure. Concerning these places, the refrain "I wanna go" becomes a sentiment that moviegoers can relate with.

"Skyline" is not Bruce McDonald's "Pontypool", the great 2009 Canadian indie whose action, brain-eating action, was also confined to one set. That zombie film had characters, especially Grant Mazzy, the disc jockey played by Stephen McHattie.

"Skyline" has zombies all right, but they're not the aliens with an appetite for grey matter; they're the actors, all of whom deliver performances that rival porno ones. We root for these boring people to escape the confinements of Terry's high-rise apartment, because the cabin fever is mutual.

We stare longingly at the theater exits. We could have stayed home and watched this sort of bargain basement sci-fi on basic cable. "Skyline" is not a wide release-caliber film. Jamal(Eric Balfour), new to L.

A., along with his girlfriend Elaine(Scottie Thompson), starts the ball rolling when he proposes the idea of going to a relatively cool place: the marina, where the boats are, where he believes the aliens aren't.

The aliens hate water, he theorizes, so they mobilize: five people, two cars, but before "Skyline" has a chance to get into gear, the car of adulterers(Terry and Denise, played by Donald Faizon and Crystal Reed) is demolished by an alien, just as it emerges from the parking garage.

No road trip; no cool places, even relatively cool ones like the marina, because "Skyline" doesn't have the budget for a full-fledged escape from Los Angeles. Whereas "Pontypool" evoked the 1938 radio broadcast of H.

G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" by insinuating the action via audio, "Skyline" projects its invasion on a flat-screen television, as a result of the link-up between the telescope and the monitor.

Both films re-imagine a scenario in which the Mercury Theater's rendering of the alien invasion, narrated by Orson Welles, was real. Appropriately enough, "Pontypool" had a captivating voice to convey the attack, while "Skyline" lets the action speak for itself, fodder for the screen, as the US military's fight with the enemy gets translated into visuals, turning the speaking-challenged actors into an auxiliary audience.

Ultimately, Jamal does end up in a cool place(climate-wise), the alien spacecraft, along with his pregnant girlfriend, once these discriminating extra-terrestrials get their fill of brains, metropolitan brains(L.

A. and New York) exclusively, according to the time-log: no Bible Belt brains, no Dustbowl brains, no Appalachian Mountain brains are not good eatin' by these otherworldly creatures' lofty standards. "Skyline" ends with a "minimum of chit-chat", as Jamal, whose consciousness now survives in an alien body, makes human contact with Elaine through touch, like some dystopian version of "E.

T.: The Extra-Terrestrial". Just when things finally, FINALLY, gets remotely interesting(staving off a zero rating), "Skyline" ends, strangely enough, on a high note.