Skyline (2010)

Skyline is a fantastic movie, absolutely superb, very possibly the top of its kind. For those wanting a movie to point at and use as an example of everything that's wrong with over-reliance on special effects. Going by more traditional criteria, Skyline is pretty terrible.

Eric Balfour and Scottie Thompson star in this sci-fi alien invasion movie that takes a few attractive young things (including Donald Faison and the gorgeous woman who was my motivation for watching this rubbish, Brittany Daniel) and then surrounds them with lots and lots of VFX in an attempt to stretch what should have been a decent 20-minute short film into a 90-minute feature.

Written by Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell (a first-time script from two men who have more of a background in VFX work) and directed by the Strause brothers (Colin and Greg, two men who have more of a background in VFX work), this movie is astoundingly inept in a number of ways. It's impressive that the brothers managed, apparently, to get the film financed without assistance from any of the major studios, but maybe having someone else heavily invested in the thing would have stopped it from feeling quite so self-indulgent and silly.

The acting is okay, I suppose, but all of the characters are too lightly sketched out and pretty unlikable. Balfour and Thompson do their best, but they're not given anything decent to work with and so end up flailing around, waiting for the next barrage of special effects to take over. Faison and Daniel fare even worse, sadly, but even they get treated better than poor Crystal Reed, who is saddled with a character who does absolutely nothing of use at any stage. At least David Zayas gets one good moment, I can only imagine that he campaigned hard for it.

I was going to end on a charitable note here and say that there were one or two good ideas and it's just a shame that the rest of the film was such a disappointment. I can't even do that. There weren't one or two good ideas, with the notable exception of the final few minutes (which has, I'll begrudgingly admit, ONE good idea). The special effects are often well done, but that's all the movie has going for it. Which is not enough to make it worth watching.

3/10

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The Hamiltons (2006)

Ah, The Butcher Brothers. The assumed name (their real names are Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) clues you into the fact that these guys want to have fun and provide the goods for horror fans. The first movie I saw from them was the very enjoyable The Violent Kind and I then sat through their surprisingly tame remake of April Fool's Day. The Hamiltons is one the movie that, essentially, game them their big break. Directed by the boys, and co-written with Adam Weis, it made quite an impact while doing the rounds at numerous horror festivals and therefore I was expecting something pretty good when I finally got around to sticking the DVD into my player.

It WAS good but it's not something that I'd rave about or quickly recommend to others. The Hamiltons is all about a family unit fending for itself after the parents have passed away. David (Samuel Child) tries to play the father of the group while young Francis (Cory Knauf) does the typical, troubled teenager act. Twins Wendell (Joseph McKelheer) and Darlene (Mackenzie Firgens) don't help to keep things in a state of domestic bliss either, especially when they get carried away and kill people. Oh yeah, The Hamiltons have quite a big secret. They kill people, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. Are they a bunch of psychopaths or is there any method in their madness? It would seem to be the former but things aren't always what they seem.

It's hard to see exactly why so many people raved about this movie a few years ago. There is some nastiness shown onscreen, the dysfunctional family provides as much black humour as tension and there is one decent twist that makes everything feel a bit fresher than it actually is but it's not quite enough to make it into a fantastic entry into the horror genre.

First of all, the acting is a real mixed bag. Cory Knauf does well and I also enjoyed the exchanges between McKelheer and Firgens but Samuel Child is a bit of a weak link and one or two of the supporting players, such as Al Liner, stick out due to their inability to act naturally. Brittany Daniel is onscreen for a few minutes so that gets the film a bonus point right there (I'm a fan, so sue me).

Then we've got the script. It's okay, I suppose, but it doesn't really have one line that sticks in the memory after the credits have rolled. Not one.

The direction is competent and the material is well-handled but it's nothing, for the most part, that we haven't seen a hundred times before. A psycho family who have some victims chained up on their premises and are trying to deal with neighbours and visitors in a pleasant and civil manner while cracks are appearing in their thin facades? It makes up at least one scene in every psycho thriller out there and to be really effective nowadays it has to be played out with maximum tension or maximum nastiness. The Hamiltons does neither, which is why it ends up as a film that just rises above average. I almost rated it lower but The Butcher Brothers always seem to have good intentions so I am always willing to give them a little bit of leeway.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Hamiltons-DVD-Cory-Knauf/dp/B000PY51Y6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349130831&sr=8-1