Highly Overrated But Still Good

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The biggest issue, is a lack of scope. Our film is focused entirely in this building, and the main characters inability to leave. In something like War of the Worlds, you see the scale of the destruction and it conveys the idea that this in an all out war. The closest we get in the final set piece with a sky battle around the main characters, which is well shot and kinda epic, but it come too little too late, and doesn't do enough to elevate the film beyond the hour and 20 minuets it spent getting there. Now a smaller scale isn't necessarily bad, like Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead, but you need to back it up with something, like some kind of commentary, or strong characters that we wan't to follow. But we don't get that either, so the film is left with nothing engaging.Speaking of characters,BORING CHARACTERSThese people are so dull and uninteresting, that I literally confused two brunettes for each other on multiple occasions. The acting is generally mixed; some good delivery, while others less so, but not to the extent that it ruins the film or that I can't appreciate when it works. But on the whole, I didn't care.Is there anything worse that following people you don't care about? How about following idiots!STUPID DECISIONSTo keep characters from succeeding, they end up resorting to idiotic decisions. Their first escape attempt fails, so don't try again! We live in this building now! Or rather this room. exploring the building might yield something interesting like a change in location. The lights in the sky are controlling people and lead to them being abducted? Maybe I can look at them through this telescope. And now you're dead. Woops!But the dumbest comes when the military shows up and lands on the builidng. Why can't we signal for help and rescue? We're at War. No seriously, he don't trust the human military, because "they're at war." Yes! Yes you are at war! And you're civilians! I actually asked a friend who served in the British Army, and apparently they are ordered to keep civilians safe in a firefight and escort them to safety when it's safe to do so. So I don't know what this guy though they would do, and it's especially dumb, since this character is the same one who insisted they hold up and wait for rescue. Then when rescue comes, can't trust them!But the biggest kick in my pateince comes with,-THE ENDING So our "heroes" are abducted by the aliens, and the people being taken have their brains taken out and used to give life to new soldiers. But because our main character is super special and important, he takes control of the alien body and uses it to save his girlfriend from a Baby extraction machine (I don't know why. The directors have a weird thing about unborn babies in this and their other film Alien vs Predator 2). So he gets ready to protect her from the aliens and....credits. It just ends. It sets up a final battle and doesn't deliver. I've actually seen people praise this film because it break from traditional Hollywood endings where the humans beat the aliens and everything is all heroic and "unrealistic", BUT THIS FILM SETS UP THE HOLLYWOOD ENDING, AND THEN JUST STOPS! If the film ending with them being abducted, accepting that there is no escape, that would be one thing. But they undercut this idea by setting up a fight and bailing before anything can happen. Having an ending is not a cliche that movies need to move away from like evil businessmen making money while making a monster, or the third act break up. It exists, because a story has to come to an end at a logical point! It's like if Star Wars just abruptly stopped as the ships approached the Death Star; you would feel rightly ripped off!Is there anything good?+THE ALIEN DESIGNS The monster design is really interesting; they use a light to hypnotise people and then abduct them, harvesting brains which give life to their machines of war. It feels better than standard aliens that just want destruction. I just wish they were in a better movie.CONCLUSION It's a flat, dull movie populated by idiots that I don't care about. Cool aliens, but they're wasted on a movie that doesn't even have an ending.

I don't get the hatred this film has received. It seems that people don't like rich yuppie kids, so the movie is automatically bad, which it really isn't. One thing that it is not, is original: It's about 80% copy of the War of the Worlds, but with different kind of ending.Regardless, the film is well made, the actors are adequately good, the plot works (not much is explained, but it doesn't need to be), movie's internal logic works and people don't act stupidly (mostly). It's not a masterpiece, but good and well made scifi movie. It's much better than for instance Spielberg's official remake of War of the Worlds.

Been a fan of scifi for 40 years, watched this with zero expectations. Admittedly i almost stopped watching it around 15 minutes in, but something made me persist and it certainly grew on me. This is not your typical alien invasion movie, it has a very strange ending, but that does not detract from it being a quality scifi story.

I'll just say this - My son and I went to see this when it was released and we love scifi, aliens, adventure, CGI flashy lights and twisty plot lines.We use skyline for the basis for judging all other scifi movies - when I say "baseline" I mean the ZERO POINT - and so far nothing has sucked as much as skyline. nothing.I'm giving you back 1 hour and 37 minutes of your life. you're welcome.:)