At a glance, Liam O’Donnell’s Beyond Skyline – a follow up to the commercially successful though rather rubbish 2010 film Skyline – does contain everything that an average low budget B movie is supposed to contain, at least at the most basic level. This includes the war against aliens, slave-like horrendously gigantic alien animals with long flailing tendrils reaching out, human brain-extracting instruments (to place them inside sea-monster medical robots) laser blasting guns with NZ Army wrappers, an actual colossal dinosaur brawl, and a special bout of fists and face kicks by the stars of The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2, Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhain. To put it bluntly, even ignoring the horrid script and spoilers that seem unending in character, The Blood Connection makes its voice above all its cheers at the screen and partially deafening fun carelessness; measuring the movie’s awfully teenage indiscretion footage alone, Beyond Skyline would be classified as a nay baby classic.
It appears that the genre itself has gotten tired and this is how the viewer finally refuses to jread any more the milksoppers that like important historical characters: Cosimo de’ Medici or Louis XIV; rather the coolest points instead. The effect would have been what even a “misinterpreted’ music would’ owed to the tempo of twenty-five years ago. There is no wall hugging with other movies and looking out over people’s heads from fireplaces. All this to say if it had an absolute edit done, Then Beyond Skyline will be this Friday and Saturday afternoon beloved surfer action buster and metamorphous for the non-serious people cine-sick.
Beyond Skyline begins in action as a tired stereotype turns out to be a cop (Frank Grillo) trying hard to bail his son out of jail – this time giving the audience just about the bare minimum of information required towards his character – only to find himself caught in the dance of too many space alien surges. Hypno-guns appear out of the clouds, structures are broken apart and people are pulled into an alien ship in bulk.
Those that withstand the lasers and the explosive carnage are bodily collected up by 12 foot metal armoured tentacled monstrosities for relocation to the mothership’s operational theatre where it just so happens that even our hero with an assorted supporting cast (Bojana Novakoic, Antonio Fargas etc) end up battling alien probes and human brain controlled alien robots.
A number of aliens depicted in the movies Beyond Skyline were done mainly with practical effects by the SFX house hy*drau”lx (that you have seen in many superhero films), and the alien robot soldiers – as it turns out in one of the mid-credits index of collectibles – are normal actors who don big costumes. Whatever good CGI technology is in late 2017 (seriously, have you seen Valerian?), they would still be a lot of textures and pretty pictures that go along with many fine details that need doing with practical effects.
Having real aliens present on set with the actors and martial artists enables the filmmakers to shoot more breathtaking human choreography and blocking which enhances the scale of Global actions. Silent Horizon is fact not the peak of the modern practical effects, but these images are thanks to the practice all the more kinetic.
Beyond Skyline is, of course, far from perfection. The characters are rather clichés, the general mood is slightly worn out and any effort towards generating real feeling is quite weak as well. What is more, there is hardly any backstory provided on the aliens themselves or their presence on our planet. They come to conquer because, well, it’s a monster movie, and monstrous figures are required. And the alien siege action and combat sequences, while always remaining in the air-conditioned average, safe zone of matinee winter entertainment, one can’t complain in the manner of the film that does such average as this one does.
The Verdict
You will obviously see much more entertaining films with aliens run rampant than Beyond Skyline, however a set of imaginative special effects, some decent battles and silly but fun alien mind-control will make you barely and a wise word very solidly content.
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