Sunday, September 9, 2018

Beyond Skyline (2017) was a blast.

I enjoyed this way too much. I'm a huge fan of Frank Grillo ever since The Purge: Anarchy, and he gets a ton to do here plus you get Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian from The Raid battling these extraterrestrials with a nice dash of bloody brutality for good measure. What's not to love here? I was shocked this was the same writer as the first film because I really liked the characters a lot this time around. Truth to be told, I didn't hate Skyline. The FX were incredible. Yes, CGI but done at a professional level on a low budget (very low for Hollywood, impossible for indies) so even a practical FX junkie like myself has to admire that. It wasn't boring, heck I rather enjoyed it like if Roger Corman finally got some money (the alien designs looked great), but this sequel blows it out of the water. I was shocked at everything they did in this film and the amount of FX is staggering. Frank Grillo definitely owns this movie and you get some surprising deaths. I love how ruthless the aliens are, ripping out everyone's brains in gory gruesome fashion. That sounds ridiculous writing it but they completely won me over (yeah I'm probably not that hard to win over). Ok, the ending goes off the rails a bit maybe, well definitely, but still I had fun. Not sure I'd be down for another one. This felt like an overdose by the final scene but you have to give the writer/director a lot of credit. He came out swinging and did a hell of a job. Yes, I like Skyline 2. I admit it. It isn't Aliens by any stretch but I had a good time. Everybody has some guilty pleasures. Mine just happen to be a bloody dinosaur movie that rips off Aliens and the Punisher killing some cool-looking E.T.'s.