YMMV / Skyline

• Angst Aversion: Anyone who's aware how the movie ends will most likely look away.
• Arc Fatigue: Most of the movie is spent with the characters running around a building and getting killed, the plot going nowhere until the end.
• Catharsis Factor: After the aliens being invincible throughout the entire first film and how monstrous they are, seeing the alien leader get progressively more frustrated and angry as his plans start to unravel before flat out panicking when he realizes the heroes have found a way that might actually beat him and ultimately being killed by Trent is immensely satisfying.
• Cliché Storm: One of the major critiques of the film.
• Fridge Logic: One big question hanging over the film: if they require human brains to power their machines, what did they use BEFORE they came to Earth?
• Idiot Ball: The group's initial plan to head to the yacht, since the aliens aren't over the water. Because a single boat on the water wouldn't be an obvious target to a race that have machines that can fly!
• Moment of Awesome: The drone attack on the aliens. Everything the air strike in Independence Day should have been.
• Narm: The Slow "NO!" scene. It's... cheesy.
• Nightmare Fuel: Every single "monster" out in the street is being controlled by the repurposed brain of what just a day or so ago was a human being.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Stealth Bomber is generally agreed upon to be the coolest scene in the movie. Some people have even commented that the Stealth Bomber was the best character in the movie!
• Paranoia Fuel: Shiploads of it in the trailer.
• Special Effect Failure: Peculiar in a film that relies so heavily on effects, but if you look closely the first time Terry shoots at the lock, literally nothing happens to the door.
• Squick: The aliens in everything they do, but especially the giant, four-legged collectors. They harvest people by grabbing them with a tentacle that shoots out from their feet. Once caught in the foot, the victim is forced inside by all four equidistant toes shoving them in with a sickening crunch.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Beyond Skyline was this, getting generally positive (well, more positive) reviews and with many critics saying it was a vast improvement over the original movie. Surprisingly improved may be a misnomer as one would be hard pressed to make a movie that doesn't improve on the original in some way. Listed reasons are superior characters, explaining things left unanswered, and generally being far more optimistic including the heroes actually finding a way to win.
• The Un-Twist: So a hyper advanced race of aliens invade Earth, decimate our defenses, rip our military forces apart and begin abducting humanity because their batteries are running out of juice. How will our race defend our right to survive and prevail against this evil force? We don't. At least not until the sequel....
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • One of the brain-powered death machines regaining its humanity and fighting to overthrow the monsters who threaten to do this to everyone on Earth? What a great story! ... Wait, that was just the last five minutes? Crap. Thankfully, the sequel runs with the idea.
  • Editing out the characters and focusing entirely on the military, media coverage, and other humans getting caught makes for a fairly interesting visual story of mankind's struggle to survive and fight back.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Literally nothing goes right for our heroes. In the end, they either die or they get harvested into brain-powered war machines or used in breeding farms for more brains. Either way you swing it, the human race is doomed from the start. This is one reason the more optimistically focused sequel is considered better.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Most of the film's 10 million dollar budget went into the effects. It shows.

---