Skyline vs Quarantine

The aliens invade during the opening credits. So, if nothing else, you can’t fault Skyline for not cutting to the chase. The aliens in Skyline arrive via beams of light, like in War of the Worlds, shot down from ships that hover over the city, like in District 9. The creatures come in a variety that includes tentacled, floating, glow-in-the-dark machine monsters, like in The Matrix, and others that walk upright and serve more as battle drones, like in Independence Day. Once in a while, there’s a huge Cloverfield monster stomping through. Toward the end, we see how they’re created. Spoiler alert: you’ve seen it before, in the Alien movies. Originality is not Skyline’s strong suit. I’m not sure what is, frankly, but I can tell you this: I recommend it.

Okay, not really. But I don’t not recommend it. The humans are largely neglected by the script (there’s only a handful of characters to begin with), but they’re mostly well-played and cast (an actress named Scottie Thompson is pretty much the only person required to do any emotional heavy-lifting, and she acquits herself just fine. Oh, and how cool is it that there’s a hot young actress who shares a name with one of the Kids in the Hall?) 

Skyline is sort of fun, redundant as all get out, and made me jump every time it showed me one of its grab-bag of aliens. Yes, every time. There are smart touches here and there. The main characters have no information on the attack from the outside world. They’re limited completely to what they can see outside their window (or from the roof, but seriously, stay off the roof). And they don’t get overly crafty in fighting back. They try the stuff you would try: guns, fire, cars, cinderblocks. And for all the clichés apparent throughout Skyline (which was directed by a couple first-timers who typically work in special effects), the ending is absolutely not a cop-out. It’s creepy and gross, and totally unexpected. 

So yeah, see Skyline, or not. It’s stupid and scary in equal parts, and on a Tuesday night, after some wings and beers with a sarcastic friend (exactly how I saw it), you could do a lot worse. 

I felt the same way about Quarantine. Didn’t want to see it, but did so begrudgingly, thinking it would be awful and I could get in my two I-Told-You-So cents to the friend who picked it, and then be placed forever in charge of selecting movies. Quarantine proved me wrong.

Quarantine, like Skyline, is a mix of things we’ve seen before from its genre. Quarantine is equal parts zombie, virus and haunted house movie, told in the handheld POV style of Blair Witch, Cloverfield, and Quarantine’s Spanish source material, Rec. This time, the story is seen through the lens of a local news camera, whose reporter (Jennifer Carpenter) is doing a ride-along with a team of firefighters. They answer a call to an apartment building, where one of the tenants has this crazy zombified rabies strain; the other residents have gathered in the lobby. As the reporter and the firemen learn the facts and dangers of the scene, something truly terrible and scary happens: the building is sealed from the outside, by the CDC. And from then on, it’s simultaneously what you expect (do any of the other tenants turn into rabid cannibals? Yes.) and what you might not (the camera gets put down from time to time, or up against closed doors, or in darkened rooms, preventing from seeing even less than the characters). Quarantine is genuinely frightening, and with Carpenter as its engaging lead (she’s Deb on Dexter, so she had a head-start with me), not quite as genuinely cheesy as it could have been. Or as Skyline.

Skyline: C

Quarantine: B