Beyond Skyline

"Beyond Skyline" is a sci-fi film too dark and with a total lack of humor. There is no character development and we do not know anything about the lead characters. The screenplay is full of clichés and a complete mess, with action, detective story, crime, sci-fi, horror and martial arts. The special effects are excellent and maybe the best part of this forgettable B-movie. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

I really wanted to like this and was waiting years for the sequel.

How disappointing. There isnt much I can say but the new characters arent a patch on the originals especially the male lead.

The story was poor and as it seems to be an asian production the martial arts nonsense was added to cater for the Indonesian audience and I note that the two main actors from THE RAID are in this as well.

I see some reviewers think the martial arts was good - IT WASN'T , it was terrible - just watch the first scene with the guy and the tree, false punches that never land and the guy from the raid whose knife spin almost fails but they kept it in the film lol

Sadly the special effects and decent CGI don't make a movie and it isnt a patch on the excellent low budget original even though they had more money to use in the sequel.

Its still worth a watch, its not that cringeworthy as some may suggest and is above average but it isn't what we were all waiting for.

Its also not fair to give the movie very very low marks as it is better than a lot of the rubbish out there like ARRIVAL that is so over-rated its just not true - It will pass a Friday evening and satisfy most Scifi buffs with its CGI and creature effects, the violence is quite gory in parts and it is a 6/10 for me - just slightly above average!

As an aside:- Check out all the shill reviewers - so easy to spot. marian_the_nightman lesza_lombok JemmaClemens

I dont know why imdb cannot weed em out.

They either just have one review under their belt or two. Reviewed the movie before its release. Just joined a month after the movie is released.

The most telling is for example user marian_the_nightman OR jemmaclemens whose every single review is given 10/10 - so obvious its sad that these shills still have their accounts.

Maybe some minor spoilers here, but come on, what is there to spoil?

It's bad. How bad is it?

Well, the movie revolves around aliens who steal brains; it starts in LA, then there's about an hour escaping the alien mothership, then they land in Vietnam and everyone knows martial arts, including the aliens (you know, because, Asia). Yes, including the token female, who was a subway engineer at the beginning of the movie. It all wraps up in some kind of macho fantasy with fighting robots and some paper-thin inspirational boondoggles about human resilience. The action sequences are so silly that I just want them to get on with it... but when the action stops, attempts at character and story development are excruciating! Yea yea, the little girl is the key to the blah blah blah... turn this glowing blue orb into a glowing red orb...

I'm not saying you shouldn't watch it-you just have to know what you're getting into. I like bad movies. I like movies that try, but are still bad, like maybe they're not quite in on the joke (for that reason, I don't like movies like Sharknado, where everyone is in on it). That's this movie. It's a special kind of bad movie, that might just hit the spot if you're looking for something truly absurd.

...this being a sequel to 2010's Skyline. The first half of this film takes place simultaneously with the events of the first film, where LA residents try to survive a citywide alien invasion. This time we follow burn-out ex-cop Mark (Frank Grillo) and his JD son Trent (Jonny Weston) who are on the LA subway train when the invasion begins. They team with other passengers, including train operator Audrey (Bojana Novakovic) and blind Vietnam war vet Sarge (Antonio Fargas) to try and escape from the invaders. Later, after a trip on one of the alien spaceships leaves them stranded in Laos, our heroes join forces with Sua (Iko Uwais) and his underground drug cartel to fight back, while also protecting a mysterious child that may be the key to salvation.

The first film was a modestly successful low-budget affair with a B-movie sensibility and a polished look that belied the small budget. That film was made by the Strause brothers, special effects pros that did almost all of the films very good visual effects at their own homes with home computers. This sequel, which still has the Strause brothers as producers, looks just as sharp, although some shots suffer from being too brightly lit, allowing the FX work to be more obvious. While the first movie was a thriller, this one heads decidedly into action movie territory, with Grillo and Asian action star Uwais both getting into many a martial arts battle. The alien's backstory is explored more, as is the first film's silly reveal that the aliens are after human brains. That element becomes key to the story, and while it's no less silly, there's an attempt made to explain and justify it. Regardless, it doesn't bother me, as it adds to the B-movie appeal. I could have done with less giant robot suit fighting, an aspect added with this film, seemingly inspired by Pacific Rim. In the end, this is a reasonably entertaining B-movie with great visuals, cardboard characters and enough going on to hold one's attention.

I liked Skyline (2010). It had a lot of action, interesting style (blue/red light, which I interpreted as something the characters don't actually see), and despite not being particularly smart like Arrival (2016) it was engaging until the ending I found very satisfying. I'm honestly surprised about most reviewers who seem to have expected a different genre altogether and were disappointed the characters aren't as deep as they think they are ;)

Beyond Skyline is simply more of the same, and I mean it. After it neatly blends with the original, it escalates the action, offers more of the same style (might be a tad too much, though), still not very intelligent yet avoids being unforgivably silly, and even delivers an ending I couldn't be happier about. It tries to avoid the mistakes of the first movie, like characterisation or dialogue, but it's debatable whether it worked. Definitely supplements the original and makes the series better than the sum of its parts.

In short, it's a lot like Independence Day (1996), much better than the sequel (2016) and provides a nice alternative to it.