DVD Review: Beyond Skyline

Still mourning the death of his wife, tough LA cop Mark Corley (Frank Grillo) struggles to connect with his wayward adult son Trent (Jonny Weston). But when an alien invasion decimates the City of Angels, kidnapping its population and sucking their brains out in order to use them to animate an army of extraterrestrial soldiers, father and son must put aside their differences to fight back against the alien menace. 

Trapped aboard their spacecraft, Mark is aided by one of the alien soldiers (the first Skyline’s transformed hero Jarrod) whose human memories and personality remain intact and discovers from Jarrod’s heavily pregnant human fiancé Elaine that the aliens are accelerating the growth of human pregnancies. Forced to deliver Jarrod’s human baby, a baby that begins to mature at a frightening rate, Mark and a small band of survivors are able to force the alien ship to crash land in the jungles of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle, finding refuge with a ragtag resistance army led by local outlaw Sua (The Raid’s Iko Uwais) and his sister Kanya (Pamelyn Chee). 

Realising that the key to defeating the aliens and saving the Earth lies within the DNA of Jarrod’s infant daughter, Mark and Sua make a last desperate stand against the alien invaders… 

Beyond Skyline is stoopid. The unasked for and not exactly eagerly awaited sequel to 2010’s relatively lo-fi alien invasion flick, Skyline, Beyond Skyline may be the dumbest film I’ve seen this year. Admittedly the year is only seven days old but it’s definitely the dumbest thing I’ve seen so far. And I’ve been staying with my septuagenarian folks over Christmas and New Year and subjected to a steady diet of Midsomer Murders, the Hollywood Medium and CNN, so I know dumb. Trust me, Beyond Skyline is dumb! It’s also noisy, ludicrously entertaining, unashamed B-movie Saturday night fun, precision designed and tooled to be the perfect accompaniment to a six pack and a pizza.

The directorial debut of the first Skyline’s producer and co-writer, Liam O’Donnell, Beyond Skyline makes about as much sense as one of Li’l Donnie’s morning dump tweets, the script, prone to it’s own lengthy info dumps, cobbled together with sci-fi genre staples (c’mon, how many times have you seen the unearthly baby saviour plot device?) but O’Donnell makes the most of his talented cast, maximises his mix of CGI and practical effects and keeps things rattling along, never pausing to draw breath or allow his audience to pick holes in the plot.

None of which really matters.

Chances are, if you’re watching Beyond Skyline, you’re not watching it for the plot, the performances, the adequacy of the script, the competence of the direction, all of which I might add are probably better than Beyond Skyline has a right to expect. No, if you’re watching Beyond Skyline, you’re probably watching it for the same reason I did: to see Frank Grillo and Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian of The Raid kick some alien ass! And while it may take a while to get there, the trio’s face off against a marauding alien army in what appears to be the ruins of Indonesia’s Prambanan temple complex (standing in for Angkor Wat) doesn’t disappoint, our heroes hacking, kicking and slashing their way through the invaders to save humanity.

Don’t think about it. Turn off that critical part of your brain or drown that nagging little voice in alcohol and just sit back and enjoy Beyond Skyline. You know you want to.