By Morgan P Salvo
The genius in opening a movie like this on X-mas day is it gives somebody like me a chance to see something a little more on the creepy side instead of family-friendly Spielberg saturated over produced holiday schlock.
I didn’t think I’d like this movie and (believe it or not) this curmudgeon actually really always wants to like the movie he sees. Plus you know you’re in trouble when the 3D movie is in one the complex’s smaller theatres
The Darkest Hour takes seconds for one to realize that this is a movie that’s going to cut corners…practically all of them. A quick set-up with the two main characters as nightclub web entrepreneurs (Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella) includes male bonding, trickery, deceit and scoring chicks in a hot Moscow night club. Then after those ten minutes have passed the aliens invade and we have a compilation of every cliché stolen from every end of the world, alien invasion, apocalyptic, doom and destruction movie ever made. That’s right Darkest Hour gets no points for originality but I had no idea how truly “suck-you-into-the-void-of-another-dimension-bad” this movie is. Good news is that after a while it gets pretty darn laughable.
Yes the world has come to an end at least in Moscow and the few survivors must pass through the city searching for help and/or a way out battling the lightning bolt entities that float around stalking the remaining humans with their thermal-heat anatomy-sensing Terminator/ Predator-like scope vision. And here’s where it gets funny: when the key to their demise is found, they are exposed as a spider-like metallic skull demon in a gyroscope. I’m not even kidding.
DH’s 3D is kind of secondary but at least it’s really shot in Russia .And what’s with director Chris Gorak coming off the heels of the critically acclaimed Right at Your Door and producer Timur Bekmambetov known for directing the ultra visionary movies Nighwatch, DayWatch and Wanted slumming it for a movie that won’t even be a sleeper hits? It just might induce sleep. But the kill scenes are good fun with people vaporizing like in the Wesley Snipes Blade flicks but no blood or guts just particles. We get scratched-surfaced characters like the old bearded electronics wizard that makes a ray gun out of microwaves, or the homeless Russian waif and as far fetched as it gets the most entertaining were the Russian road warrior survivor types bent on existing only to honorably self destruct or be heroes or both.
This flick has horribly beautiful people spouting really wretched dialogue stuck in a movie they can’t act their way out of. Actually there is no real acting, just pretending and some out pretend and over pretend more than others. Hirsch (Into the Wild/Milk) acts like it’s his first movie as an adult and can’t quite make the transition.
The weirdest part is how unexplained these electrical entities are. I mean it’s a good thing this movie is short due its lack of intelligence but if DH had been a little longer the filmmakers could’ve added to the science fiction aspect by having some half-ass 50’s era scientific explanation to all this inter galactic nonsense .Seriously? Electrical charges that house metallic demon heads hunting down innocent humans? I guess I’ve seen worse. Still… I suppose there’s’ no harm no foul when a generic flick like this comes out with its ready- whipped apocalyptic end of the world scenario where heroes are born and secondary characters get vaporized. Merry Christmas.
The Darkest Hour
Starring Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella, Rachael Taylor, Joel Kinnaman,
Directed by Chris Gorak
Rated PG-13
2 stars
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