The Darkest Hour

Directed byChris Gorak

StarringEmile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Rachael Taylor, Max Minghella, Joel Kinnaman

Alien invasion films can usually work as a simple piece of mindless entertainment.  Usually offering a few thrills, spills, and tension filled moments, it makes no difference how plausible they are, so long as you are given some nifty effects and drama.  Films such as Independance Day, War of the Worlds, and Cloverfield all take different approaches, and all work in their own way, despite being a bit contrived and flawed.  Then you have films such as Skyline that fail to engage at all.....

...and then you have The Darkest Hour!

The scene is Moscow, and a pair of lifelong buddies are there to sell an idea for a mobile-web-social-app-type thing (I lost interest so early in that I wasn't sure if it was explained at all), only to find that the idea was stolen by some other guy from Sweden, or Holland, or wherever his accent was supposed to be from.  So they go to a nightclub filled with Russians who don't seem to speak in much Russian, and meet some American girl and her friend (thanks to the app type thing).  Then all the lights cut out, and some strange glowing things drift down from the sky.  Turns out these glowy things are nasty and disintegrate people and stuff.  Cue running, hiding, and then trying to find other survivors a few days later.

Now if that synopsis above seems a tad vague, that is because none of the film makes much sense!  I must warn you all that i am about to break tradition and reveal some of the 'plot' - so if you hate spoilers, and actually feel like you want to see this film, then don't read any further, just look at the rating and make your decision.  

The invisible aliens seem to spend a few days wiping out life, before simply drilling down into the planet for natural resources - why they didn't just demolish the buildings in the first place I don't know (it would have been quicker).  They also seem to blow up if a body segment of one of their own is thrown at them - seems like a serious genetic flaw there, and I'm quite astonished that they managed to traverse space with such a weakness (and am baffled as to what compelled the heroic lead to throw it in the first place).  But then again, why look for logic in a film which has characters only realise a bridge has a hige chunk missing once they have walked half way across it and are stood at the gap?  Or even a film where someone falls off a boat and ends up about a mile inland!  Or where lines of dialogue are so bad they remind you of a late night movie you saw on SyFy!

All of that criticism, and not a mention of the acting.  Well, that's because I didn't actually see any acting take place.  If you have ever seen a read-through of a script (some DVDs have them in the extras), and seen how dry and flat the dialogue is spoken when they are seeing how it works, well this whole film feels like a read-through!  Terrible lines spoken in unconvincing accents, giving us a bunch of characters that we don't care one bit for!

Similarities with Skyline abound, as that film had a similar concept, and a cast of actors who have done much better work before, yet it failed to engage on any level!  The Darkest Hour matches that film for level of cheese!

But surely the 3D makes up for it, after all it is from the producer of Wanted?  Simply put, it doesn't!  In fact, the 3D is so underused that most of the film lacks any depth or reason for wearing the glasses!  The moments that should stand out (when the sparks or disintegrations are on screen) seem really flat, and it is only the occasional long shot that reminds you that the film is 3D.

I can honestly say that this film isn;t even one of those, "So bad, it's funny!" films, as it takes itself far too serious.  Had it been a little more tongue in cheek with the approach, it could have passed as a parody of alien invasion films.  Instead it is a flatly directed, poorly acted, and unengaging mess of a film in which not much happens, and no-one cares when it does.