5.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
A tough-as-nails detective embarks on a relentless pursuit to free his son from a nightmarish alien warship.
Starring: Frank Grillo, Bojana Novakovic, Iko Uwais, Callan Mulvey, Betty GabrielAction | 100% |
Horror | 93% |
Sci-Fi | 86% |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: LPCM 2.0
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Skyline was an object lesson in “if you build it, they will come,” even if what you’ve built has been seen (lots of times) before, and even when those modern day oracles known as film critics say what you’ve built is basically a piece of garbage. There have been so many alien invasion movies stretching back decades now that the genre has arguably been exhausted, even with the uptick in grandeur that CGI offered the special effects wizards often assigned to such productions. Skyline had the requisite SFX majesty, but from a narrative standpoint it was something of a mess, as my colleague Ken Brown pointed out in his Skyline Blu-ray review. And, yet — people came to Skyline in significant enough quantities to generate a sizable profit for the first film, though evidently this sequel was at least in the planning stages before any tickets were ever sold for the first film. Skyline’s co-writer Liam O’Donnell has been promoted to writer-director for this sophomore entry in what may be one of the longest gestating “franchises” in history (this sequel is appearing over seven years after the original), and while this may be damning with faint praise, Beyond Skyline is at least marginally more coherent than its progenitor. It also ups the special effects wizardry on display, as a tortured Los Angeles cop (is there any other kind in a film like this?) named Mark Corley (Frank Grillo) finds himself (literally) swept up in an alien invasion. Somewhat hilariously (and a different kind of object lesson about the film industry), though Beyond Skyline is at least arguably a "better" film than Skyline (again, a rather low bar to overcome), it completely tanked at the box office, not even breaking a paltry one million in receipts according to some online sites.
Beyond Skyline is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Vertical Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists the Red Epic Dragon as having digitally captured the imagery, and I am assuming this was finished at a 2K DI. The results are typically very sleek and sharp looking, though there are a few recurrent issues with noise creeping into some of the darker moments (notably some in the subway tunnel). There are a few kind of curious drop offs in quality, which made me wonder if in fact some parts of the film had perhaps been captured at lower resolutions (intentionally, perhaps to give it a "fly on the wall" ambience). Detail levels are generally very good to excellent, though the grading scheme employed in the film, which bathes huge swaths of the proceedings in deep blue tones, clearly depletes fine detail levels at times, which can be spotted in some of the screenshots accompanying this review. CGI looks surprisingly well detailed most of the time, with very little of the kind of soft quality that often creeps into such efforts.
Beyond Skyline features an intermittently forceful DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, one which attains its best immersion in expected elements like the initial attack scene (which includes a pretty elaborate set of explosions, including one that appears to be nuclear). Once the film segues to its longer scenes inside various ships, there's a nice cloistered feeling to the sound design, with discrete placement of individual effects in the surround channels, often with a kind of "echo-y" ambience that reinforces the supposed environment. Dialogue and score are both rendered clearly and cleanly on this problem free track.
There are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray disc, perhaps one indication that this release is being treated as a write off.
The good news is that Beyond Skyline is better than Skyline. The bad news is that's not saying much. Technical merits are generally fine for those considering a purchase.
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