The Darkest Hour? Damn right! Only it’s not just an hour this sci-fi/horror nonsense will darken in your otherwise idyllic world. Trying adding another twenty nine minutes to that and you’ll be closer to the truth. What starts out as a frothy, brainless and initially xenophobic colourful wodge of celluloid nonsense mutates quickly into just nonsense and akin to an endurance test bang up there next to Chinese Water Torture. Yes! It’s that bad!
Director Chris Gorak directed the rather tense Right at Your Door, a flawed apocalyptic thriller that bode well for another slice of end of the world nonsense with The Darkest Hour. One can only assume that his directorial debut was either a fluke or that in the case of his second effort one that was bound to the demands of an American/Russian co-production instead. It’s a shame as the first twenty minutes size up to being a guilty pleasure to drink a few beers to. After the initial set up and associated extras getting zapped by invisible alien forces The Darkest Hour runs out of ideas and becomes more about just having the characters run from situations they shouldn’t have put themselves in to begin with.
Charisma vacuum Emile Hirsch stars as Sean a software designer whom along with his buddy Ben (Max Minghella) pop over to Moscow expecting their new social networking concept to go down a wow with their anticipated Russian buyers only to find out that their Swedish business partner Skyler (Joel Kinnaman) has already swine has passed the idea of as his own and sold it to the Russians. Drowning their sorrows in a nightclub they come across two young women Anne (Rachael Taylor) and Natalie (Olivia Thilby), who just happen to take a shine to our obnoxious leads.
Salvation comes in the form of strange, luminous apparitions that descend from the sky and start disintegrating anyone in their path. But wouldn’t you just know it! Our wholesome foursome survives and spends the rest of the movie annoying us with their predictability and zero personalities as they run around a desolate and generally emptyMoscoweffectively bringing certain death with them to anyone they come across on their travels.
It’s evident that The Darkest Hour was looking to appeal to the largest possible demographic with disposal income rather than end up as adorning critic’s ‘best of the year’ lists and in wanting to appeal to that lowest common denominator it ends up alienating a sizable portion of the audience who may have just gone on to recommend it to their friends. However in today’s movie climate no listens to critiques, even if it’s from a trusted buddy with similar tastes, I mean how else one could explain how rubbish like the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels rake in a billion or more each? So chances are if you want to see a badly conceived sci-fi/horror flick set in Russiawith people running around in search of a plot to hang the action off then you’ll rent or buy this anyway. Best of luck to you!