Beyond Skyline

Beyond Skyline is a 2017 American science fiction action film written and directed by Liam O'Donnell in his directorial debut. It stars Frank Grillo, Bojana Novakovic, Jonny Weston, Iko Uwais, Callan Mulvey, Yayan Ruhian, Pamelyn Chee, Betty Gabriel, and Antonio Fargas. It is a direct sequel to the 2010 film Skyline, picking up where the first film left off.

Beyond Skyline
Theatrical release poster
Directed byLiam O'Donnell
Produced by
Written byLiam O'Donnell
Based onCharacters
by Joshua Cordes
Liam O'Donnell
Starring
Music byNathan Whitehead
CinematographyChristopher Probst
Edited by
  • Sean Albertson
  • Banner Gwin
Production
company
  • Hydraulx
  • North Hollywood Films
  • Infinite Frameworks Studios
  • Mothership Pictures
Distributed byVertical Entertainment
Release date
  • October 14, 2017 (2017-10-14) (TADFF)
  • December 15, 2017 (2017-12-15) (United States)
Running time
105 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$20 million[1]
Box office$992,181[2]

The film was released on December 15, 2017 in the United States by Vertical Entertainment. Unlike its critically panned predecessor, Beyond Skyline received mixed reviews, with several critics calling it an improvement over the original.

Plot

Taking place at the same time as Skyline, Mark Corley, a Los Angeles police detective, helps his estranged son, Trent, out of jail just as an alien invasion begins. The entire population of the city is sucked into various spaceships by a blue light. Mark leads a group of surviving humans through underground subway tunnels to escape, though most of the humans are killed or abducted, one by one. The survivors – Mark, Trent, transit operator Audrey, and a homeless man known only as "Sarge", who is immune to the blue light due to his blindness – escape to the marina following the city's nuclear destruction, only to be abducted into the alien flagship by a towering alien tanker.

On board the spaceship, Mark tries to find his son and storms his way into various chambers, where he meets up with survivor Elaine and her transformed boyfriend Jarrod (from the first film). Elaine explains that Jarrod retained control of his mind despite being transformed into a bio-mechanical alien soldier. Though Elaine is three months pregnant, her pregnancy has accelerated and she gives birth to a daughter.

Elaine dies during the delivery, and Mark and Jarrod team up to destroy the alien ship by setting alien explosives inside the ship's control systems. When Jarrod is killed fighting the alien leader, Mark rescues Audrey but is too late to save his son.

Trent has his brain taken and placed in another alien bio-mechanical machine creature. Sarge is badly wounded when he defends the baby from an alien. The dying Jarrod destroys the ship, which crashes in rural Laos.

Mark, Audrey, Sarge and the baby escape from the spaceship which starts to repair itself. Sarge dies from his wounds shortly after the group meets Sua and his sister Kanya who belong to a drug cartel and fight against both aliens and local rogue ex-policemen bandits.

As they trek through the jungle, the group discovers that the human baby grows at an accelerated rate, from an infant into a three-year-old in just one day. Sua and Kanya lead Mark, Audrey, and the baby to a hidden human resistance hideout and drug processing facility located in local ruins.

Harper, a medical officer and former drug chemist, examines the baby girl and learns about her unique DNA. Harper believes her blood may be the key to defeating the aliens due to her evolving DNA. Using the child's blood and recovered alien technology, Harper develops a serum he believes will free the bio-mechanical soldiers from alien control and restore their human personality. Though Sua insists on killing all the bio-mechanical soldiers, Mark convinces Sua to allow him to save Trent.

While on a patrol, Kanya encounters a four-legged tanker alien and sacrifices herself by luring it into an old minefield left over from the Vietnam war. Though she destroys it, she unwittingly gives away their location to the alien ships searching for the human newborn child. They converge on the human base.

During the resulting battle between the aliens and the humans several members of the human resistance are killed, including Harper. Mark enters a grounded alien ship where he uses Harper's serum to turn the mind-controlling blue light into a red light that frees the mind-controlled bio-mechanical soldiers. Before he can deploy it, the alien leader and his horde of alien warriors attacks the human resistance and disables the light.

Trent, his mind restored after encountering his father, fights back inside a giant alien tanker. While the alien leader is busy fighting Trent, the child fixes and deploys the red light, freeing the bio-mechanical soldiers, and Trent defeats the alien leader. With Earth saved, Audrey names the girl Rose after Mark's deceased wife.

Ten years later, Rose, now a fully-grown adult, has taken control of an alien ship, and alien Trent is her second-in-command. Rose leads freed bio-mechanical soldiers and humans in an assault on the other alien ships around the Moon, including the mothership.

Cast

Production

In November 2014, Variety announced that Iko Uwais would join the cast, alongside Frank Grillo, Bojana Novakovic, and Yayan Ruhian. Liam O’Donnell wrote the script for the film, also wrote the script for the first film, will now direct as well as produce with Greg and Colin Strause serving as producers also.[7] The Strause Brothers were the directors of the first film, Skyline. Matthew Chausse will also produce. Uwais and Ruhian will also serve as fight choreographers on the film.[6]

The film's visual effects and production were done by Hydraulx.[8]

Filming

Principal photography began in December 2014, with shooting in Yogyakarta and Batam, Indonesia. and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[9][10][5][11] The finale of the film was shot in the Indonesian Prambanan temple complex, though the script suggests that it is located in Laos.[12][13]

Release

The first film had a PG-13 rating but the sequel was given an R rating by the MPAA. On Alien Day 2017, set photos were released to show what the aliens in Beyond Skyline looked like for the sequel. The first trailer was released on August 16, 2017. The film premiered at Sitges Film Festival October 8, 2017. The film went on to screen at several genre film festivals including Toronto After Dark, Trieste Science+Fiction, Austin Other Worlds, Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, Rio Grind Vancouver, and was the closing night film at the inaugural Cinepocalypse in Chicago on November 9. Beyond Skyline was released on VOD and Digital on December 15, 2017, and on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 8, 2018.[14]

Sequel
Main article: Skylines (film)

A third and final film, Skylines, again directed by O'Donnell and produced by the Strause brothers, was released on December 18, 2020.

Reception

Critical response

As of December 2020, the film holds a 67% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 21 reviews with an approval rating of 5.50 out of 10.[15] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[16]

References
  1. Knight, Jacob (December 19, 2017). "Beyond Skyline Review: Frank Grillo Destroys All Monsters". Birth.Movies.Death.
  2. "Beyond Skyline". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  3. Kristy Puchko (November 2014). "Skyline Is Definitely Getting A Sequel, Here's Who Is Starring". Cinema Blend. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  4. Sean Decker (March 11, 2015). "Exclusive: Jonny Weston Joins Beyond Skyline". Dread Central. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  5. James White (November 9, 2014). "Frank Grillo Goes Beyond Skyline". Empire Online. Archived from the original on January 8, 2015. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  6. Brent Lang (November 8, 2014). "'Raid' Star Iko Uwais Joins 'Beyond Skyline'". Variety. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  7. Kevin Jagernauth (November 7, 2014). "Casting: Frank Grillo To Lead 'Skyline' Sequel, Noomi Rapace Has A 'Price' & More". Indie Wire. Archived from the original on January 9, 2015. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  8. Carolyn Giardina (June 25, 2014). "VFX House Hydraulx Aims to Expand Business Model With Production Services". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  9. Frank Grillo (December 21, 2014). "Me and my boy #ikoUlwais #BEYONDSKYLINE Gonna miss beating the shit out of each other. #brother". Frank Grillo's Verified Twitter. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  10. Bojana Novakovic (December 22, 2014). "Shhh. The set's asleep. #BeyondSkyline @ Prambanan Temple, Yogyakarta, Indonesia". Bojana Novakovic's Verified Twitter. Retrieved January 5, 2015.
  11. Howard, Kirsten (December 13, 2017). "Liam O'Donnell interview: Skyline, Beyond Skyline". denofgeek.com. Dennis Publishing. Retrieved December 28, 2017. ... Once we landed Frank [Grillo] in the fall of 2014, we had to shoot pretty quickly because he had so many other projects in his schedule. So we started production in December...we finished everything in Toronto, the only place in North America you can shoot on real subway tracks, in May 2015.
  12. Wira, Ni Nyoman (November 1, 2017). "Uwais-Ruhiyan duo at it again in 'Beyond Skyline'". thejakartapost.com. Retrieved December 28, 2017. The film was shot in Toronto in Canada, and Batam and Yogyakarta in Indonesia, including at Prambanan temple.
  13. Knight, Jacob (December 19, 2017). "BEYOND SKYLINE Review: Frank Grillo Destroys All Monsters". birthmoviesdeath.com. Retrieved December 28, 2017. ...cinematographer Christopher Probst (Mindhunter) stops to admire the fact that he's shooting a good chunk of this movie in Indonesia (standing in for Laos)... setting the humans' final stand against this invading, grey matter sucking horde on the steps of Yogyakarta's Prambanan Temples.
  14. ""Beyond Skyline" A Corner Harder: Aliens Attack with R Rating". Movie Jones. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  15. "Beyond Skyline (2018)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
  16. "Beyond Skyline Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 11, 2018.
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