The Darkest Hour (2011)
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Olvia Thirlby, Max Minghella
Writers: Leslie Bohem, M.T. Ahern, John Spaihts
Director: Chris Gorak
****SLIGHT SPOILERS****
Story:
Aliens are using Earth's power supply
to fuck shit up. Five people try to stick together and fight for the good
of all mankind! Sorta. I guess.
Review:
Gah, I hate nothing more than
mediocrity. Give me a piece of shit over something blah and I'm
pretty happy. At least with crap there's something to talk about.
With mediocrity, doing a write-up is a struggle. The Darkest Hour
takes the age old 'alien invasion' theme and tries to make it cool by
infusing some neat E.T.s with interesting methods behind how they
work, as well as how they can be detected, and pretty bad ass looking
apocalyptic scenery...but that's basically where the “cool” ends.
The story is extremely run-of-the-mill, chock full of uninteresting characters who accompany you for the ride.
There's some really ridiculous crap in
this movie that normally wouldn't bother me, but in something as
uninteresting as The Darkest Hour, ridiculousness sticks out like a sore
fucking thumb. Just after the aliens (cased in a transparent force
field) rain down on Moscow and start the disintegration game on
humans, a group of five (three dudes and two chicks) lock themselves
in a storeroom located down in the basement of the nightclub they were
partying at. They are there for days. FOR DAYS. It quiets down above
just as the group run out of food, so they decide to go out and see
how deep of shit they are in. Tellin' ya, they come out of their
little hideout and look no worse for wear than when they
went in. Days with no shower, little food, restless, and scared. Yet, the girls are still pretty and the dudes are too. Only once
they start traveling through the vacant city do they get some smudges
on their faces and clothing. Bullshit. Like I said, this wouldn't
bother me had I been entertained by how good or bad the film was.
Point being- it's pretty damn sad when the main thing you're worrying
about is how dirty someone would be in the aftermath of an alien
apocalypse. I will say that how the otherworldly creatures detect
humans and vice versa is awesome. I wish I had something else
positive to say about the story... moving on.
The Darkest Hour is great from a visual
standpoint. After the group ascend from hiding and go out into the
city, they find nothing but vast emptiness covered in ash that was
once living things. Human dust covers cars, buildings are
crumbling and it's captured fantastically; many a wide shot of
the bleakness all around them. I also dug the nighttime sequences of
city streets blanketed in nothing but electric-less cars that will only
flash headlights when an alien is near. There's also a few
interesting underwater cam shots too, which I tend to love. Sounds bad
ass, right? Well, throw a bland story on top of this awesomeness and
how well the setting looks suddenly doesn't mean shit. Sorry.
Oh yeah, maybe midway through, there's
a very 28 Days Later-esque element thrown in for whatever reason that
worked so damn well in Danny Boyle's rage fueled epic. Here, it falls
flat on it's face, due to all those uninteresting characters I
brought up earlier.
These people are BORING and depthless. I can't
identify with a fucking one of them, unless you wanna count dude
genitalia. We may be the same in that aspect, if you keep size on the
down-low. Oh, I do like to drink, but not in some lame ass nightclub.
Anyway. Poor Joel Kinnaman. Judging from the dude's work on AMC's The
Killing, he deserves a helluva lot better. It seems
like the director just walked up to him and said “Hey man! You're a
dickhead in this movie! Work it out, mmkay?” Max Minghella plays
social networking designer, Ben, who has his software idea stolen
from him and emulated. Whoa, kinda sorta a LOT sounds like that
mix-up you and your buddies had in The Social Network, where you
played real life guy, Divya Narenda. That story was heaps more
interesting. In The Darkest Hour, Ben's partner is Sean (Emile
Hirsch). This fuckin' guy. He starts off like the lazy one of their
business endeavor. Then, for the last half of the film he's rallying every
last survivor in Moscow to fight the good fight. To stand up and make
a difference! Gimme a break. I'd laugh my ass off at this dude.
Olivia Thirlby and Rachel Taylor play besties Natalie and Anne.
They are hot (especially Thirlby during those 6 seconds of nothing on
but a bra and panties), that is all. It's not even that the acting is
bad in The Darkest Hour; it's that no one has anything to work with.
I will give props to the CGI. The
shielded aliens look cool when you see them, as do people when they
are being vaporized by said shielded aliens. The creatures should have had a better story to wreak havoc in. Not much else to say in this
department.
When you're not being punished by some
of the worst dance songs thrown into a film, you're being put to
sleep by a seriously fucking uninspired musical score from Tyler
Bates. Ya know, something exciting could have definitely made certain
areas of this flick more intense. It's mostly just a bunch of sounds.
I guess I can't really say I'm let down, because I had
no expectations. Just thought the trailer looked kinda cool. It's just this: I
remember great movies forever. I remember “so bad they're good”
movies forever. I even remember utter steaming piles of fucking shit
forever... or at least for a long time. I'll forget about The Darkest
Hour by the end of the week.
P.S.
Best part of the movie- the fact that a
cat is named after DJ Lance Rock from Yo Gabba Gabba!
Worst part of the movie- when one of
the characters is finally able to access their text messages. Just you
fuckin' wait.
