Low-budget alien invasion movies shot with handheld cameras have been all the rage over the past few years. In fact, their path can be compared to the life of a phoenix. Since it’s "Harry Potter" week, let’s use Fawkes, Dumbledore’s little firebird. In 2008, “Cloverfield” was the beginning of the life cycle — Fawkes as a baby — a wonderful idea that set the stage for the future but was too infantile to be great. Fawkes soon matured and at his peak was a magnificent, highly cognizant specimen, suddenly appearing to save Harry’s tuchas against the Basilisk. This is analogous to last year’s outrageously good “District 9,” which came out of nowhere to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and essentially perfect the genre.

“Skyline”

At Quality 16 and Rave
Universal

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But after old age, Fawkes burst into flames and fell into a pile of ashes — the tragic, charred remains of something that was once glorious. This is “Skyline.”

“Skyline” isn’t just stupendously awful — though it definitely ranks among the Seven Wonders of Terrible Filmmaking — it’s a despicable case of studios manipulating audiences to make a quick profit on a knowingly terrible product. The budget for the movie was supposedly only $10 million, but it’s clear that the studio stuffed a Z-list cast into a rancid plot, spending most of that budget on visual effects. They then used the better-looking effects to string together a pretty cool teaser trailer and some TV spots, selling audiences on an epic alien invasion extravaganza.

Man, that shit is effing ridiculous — it’s absolutely deplorable marketing, as most of the film consists of characters hiding out in a high-rise condominium, watching aliens and UFOs from a distance. They sit and debate whether to stay or escape, decide to run for it, fail, return to the condo and wait around until the aliens arrive to suck everyone’s brains out. This is the furthest thing possible from epic — “Skyline” is just the cinematic equivalent of a bottle episode.

The single location could have been used to the film’s advantage, creating a stifling, claustrophobic environment with aliens breathing down the necks of our heroes. But it just becomes pathetic; it's obvious that the filmmakers were trying to minimize production costs and didn’t have enough money to stage a sequence outside of the condo.

There's a handful of impressive effects, like a brief battle between military fighter jets and UFOs, but it’s laughable to say they justify watching even a second of the rest of the film, especially with its horrible cast spouting horrible dialogue.

It’s not as if the actors in “Cloverfield” were especially talented, but their relative anonymity greatly assisted the film’s attempts at realism. The same doesn’t hold for the distracting cast of “Skyline,” a mishmash of random television actors including the guy from “24” with the gross facial hair (Eric Balfour), Angel Batista from “Dexter” (David Zayas), Turk from “Scrubs” (Donald Faison) and Mac’s transsexual ex-girlfriend from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (Brittany Daniel). And they are all terrible.

“Skyline” is a supreme embarrassment. Of course, not every movie has to be “District 9,” but “Skyline” wouldn’t even fly as a SyFy original movie. The Universal executives are probably patting themselves on the back for already making a return on their investment (thanks to a $12 million opening weekend), but they deserve to be smacked for selling such a defective product to the world.

The phoenix always rises from the ashes, and the low-budget alien invasion movie should reclaim its splendor next year with “Battle: Los Angeles” (which has a fantastic trailer) and the J.J. Abrams-directed “Super 8.” One can only hope.