The Darkest Hour (**)
Directed by: Chris Gorak
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella, Rachael Taylor,
Joel Kinnaman
Seen: January 31st 2012
** Out of ****
I suspect that The Darkest Hour will be the worst 2012 movie that I
actually like. It isn’t good, the dialogue is painfully faux heroic at times
and for a movie that is only 89 minutes long it still feels stretched out on
occasion. It is interesting to see the alien invasion movie from a Russian
perspective, even though all major characters are still Americans in Moscow. Produced
by Timur Bekmambetov, who brought us Wanted, the movie was always going to have
some visual flair, and The Darkest Hour looks and feels pretty cool for the
most part.
Two young software developers, Sean (Hirsch) and Ben (Minghella),
travel to Moscow to market their new social networking website, but are
upstaged by a Swedish developer, Skyler (Kinnaman), who can’t stop telling them
that this is business – silencing his conscience perhaps. Sean and Ben go to a
popular night-club to mourn their loss, where they meet two travellers, Natalie
(Thirlby), an American, and Anne (Taylor), an Australian. They run into Skyler
again, still claiming it’s only business. Then suddenly everyone is outside,
marvelling at an Aurora Borealis-like orange tinted night sky as orange balls
of light drop down from the sky and vanish/become invisible as they hit the
ground. A policeman walks up to it, and is devoured with only ashes remaining –
and people start running. Sean, Ben, Natalie, Anne and Skyler end up locked in
a basement pantry for a few days, and when they exit, Moscow is desolate,
people are now in very short supply.
The group survives some close calls with the aliens, but the outlook
is grim until they meet a Russian who has built a Faraday cage – an electronic
barrier that keeps the aliens out. He’s also constructed a microwave gun, but
this looks like a pipe dream as it soon proves effective but not wholly so. As the
five continue, they learn small things about the aliens and they come across
some survivors after learning of a point of hope, a Russian nuclear submarine
waiting for survivors before setting out. They head for the submarine, but they
realise things are far from over soon enough.
The Darkest Hour mixes some enjoyable elements with some very bad
dialogue and some jarring plot advancement points. The special effects are relatively
good, until the aliens are revealed for the first time; they look very much
like napkin-scrawled doodles, like something that belongs in a Saturday morning
kids animation. The acting is as can be expected from a little movie like this,
regardless of it a thread-bare story must be told. I can’t remember ever seeing
a global apocalypse event movie that felt so limited in scale, so local, even
though global mention is made.
The Darkest Hour looked cool, but there is very little under this
slightly shiny veneer to hold up the shell. I might have enjoyed this more 10
to 15 years ago, but now I find it a bit of a stretch.
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