There are some legitimately interesting concepts at play in Chris Gorak’s The Darkest Hour. It features a creative alien design, plays with some cool scientific ideas and takes place in a fairly uncommon international setting. But filmmaking isn’t just about concept, it’s about execution. Glossing over all of the attention-grabbing elements,
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The Darkest movie cast and crew
Directed by
Chris Gorak
Emile Hirsch
Olivia Thirlby
Max Minghella
Rachael Taylor
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Joel Kinnaman
Veronika Vernadskaya
Dato Bakhtadze
Yuriy Kutsenko
Nikolay Efremov
Georgiy Gromov
Artur Smolyaninov
Anna Rudakova
Pyotr Fyodorov
Ivan Gromov
The Darkest movie review
The Darkest Hour is one of the few motion pictures that actually acknowledges the existence of herpes, and I applaud it for that. Not many other critics seem to share my sentiment. The film has a genuinely pathetic “11% Fresh” rating at RottenTomatoes, which seems to imply an almost biblical disaster captured on celluloid. With those low expectations in mind, you’d be surprised to learn that – on the small screen at least – The Darkest Hour is a pleasing, albeit generic B-movie experience. Clichés are prevalent, but are presented in the spirit of fun and buoyed by a handful of intriguing notions that make the Blu-ray, now available from Summit Entertainment, an enjoyable if brainless rental.
Chris Gorak’s film plays out like one subplot of an Irwin Allen, or more more accurately Roland Emmerich, ensemble disaster movie. A pair of young iPhone app entrepreneurs – Emile Hirsch (Speed Racer) and Max Minghella (The Social Network) – are on a business trip to Moscow when aliens invade the Earth. The twist, such as it is, is that these aliens are made of pure energy. Generally invisible to the human eye, and given away only by the power surge in electronics as they pass by, they have destroyed almost all human life on earth within days. Our heroes, and their love interests and one prerequisite jerkwad (Olivia Thirlby from Juno, Rachael Taylor from Transformers and our new Robocop Joel Kinnaman) embark on a journey through the ravaged city in the hopes of finding safety, or at least a group of survivors less screwed than they are.
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The difficulties involved with telling an alien invasion story with invisible aliens – my god that sounds cheap, doesn't it – are offset by The Darkest Hour’s sometimes-impressive special effects, which at least give the film some sense of scale. But the threat seems diminished because aliens simply disintegrate their victims, giving the film a PG-13 vibe that’s hard to take too seriously by preventing the danger from feeling physical. What Gorak seems to have been after, however, was less a conventional desolation thriller and more of a primer for young geeks looking for new things to debate about. Much of the bland cast spends their time hypothesizing about the aliens’ motives, weaknesses and abilities, which plays half like a transcription from the writers’ room and half like a gang of junior high school students trying to win a “No Prize.” For a film about an all-encompassing alien apocalypse, the resulting tone is surprisingly charming, which I suspect many folks saw as a fundamental problem.
But if you can look past The Darkest Hours’ frailties you’ll find a goofy and fun low-budget sci-fi action flick full of ridiculous gadgets (the homemade microwave gun is a hoot) a handful of memorable action beats and an awkward sequel tease that feels like it was thrown together in less time than it would take to listen to a Ramones song. Clearly they thought they had something special, and while they were technically wrong, the affection the filmmakers had for the material does shine through even in the goofier parts.
The proof is in the digital pudding: Summit’s Blu-ray of The Darkest Hour – handsomely presented with a fine surround sound mix – includes a new short film, The Darkest Hour: Survivors, which actually goes the Irwin Allen route by presenting a handful of parallel stories of other survivors throughout the world trying to make a last stand against the unnamed alien menace. It’s an arch little short, but the approach prevents any of the many characters from overstaying their welcome, which the “Oh I Get It” segment with the American soldiers teaming up with the Taliban could have easily fallen victim to.
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The other special features available, a short “Making Of” presentation, a handful of completely unnecessary deleted scenes and an informative, likable commentary track from Chris Gorak give the impression that The Darkest Hour is something bigger than the dud it turned out to be. If you can look past its failure to turn into a pop culture phenomenon – despite obvious attempts to make that happen – you’ll find a dorky but entertaining genre romp that’s just dumb enough to feel like the product of intelligent grown ups who wanted to make something they’d have dug as widdle kids.
Chris Gorak’s film plays out like one subplot of an Irwin Allen, or more more accurately Roland Emmerich, ensemble disaster movie. A pair of young iPhone app entrepreneurs – Emile Hirsch (Speed Racer) and Max Minghella (The Social Network) – are on a business trip to Moscow when aliens invade the Earth. The twist, such as it is, is that these aliens are made of pure energy. Generally invisible to the human eye, and given away only by the power surge in electronics as they pass by, they have destroyed almost all human life on earth within days. Our heroes, and their love interests and one prerequisite jerkwad (Olivia Thirlby from Juno, Rachael Taylor from Transformers and our new Robocop Joel Kinnaman) embark on a journey through the ravaged city in the hopes of finding safety, or at least a group of survivors less screwed than they are.
.jpg)
The difficulties involved with telling an alien invasion story with invisible aliens – my god that sounds cheap, doesn't it – are offset by The Darkest Hour’s sometimes-impressive special effects, which at least give the film some sense of scale. But the threat seems diminished because aliens simply disintegrate their victims, giving the film a PG-13 vibe that’s hard to take too seriously by preventing the danger from feeling physical. What Gorak seems to have been after, however, was less a conventional desolation thriller and more of a primer for young geeks looking for new things to debate about. Much of the bland cast spends their time hypothesizing about the aliens’ motives, weaknesses and abilities, which plays half like a transcription from the writers’ room and half like a gang of junior high school students trying to win a “No Prize.” For a film about an all-encompassing alien apocalypse, the resulting tone is surprisingly charming, which I suspect many folks saw as a fundamental problem.
But if you can look past The Darkest Hours’ frailties you’ll find a goofy and fun low-budget sci-fi action flick full of ridiculous gadgets (the homemade microwave gun is a hoot) a handful of memorable action beats and an awkward sequel tease that feels like it was thrown together in less time than it would take to listen to a Ramones song. Clearly they thought they had something special, and while they were technically wrong, the affection the filmmakers had for the material does shine through even in the goofier parts.
The proof is in the digital pudding: Summit’s Blu-ray of The Darkest Hour – handsomely presented with a fine surround sound mix – includes a new short film, The Darkest Hour: Survivors, which actually goes the Irwin Allen route by presenting a handful of parallel stories of other survivors throughout the world trying to make a last stand against the unnamed alien menace. It’s an arch little short, but the approach prevents any of the many characters from overstaying their welcome, which the “Oh I Get It” segment with the American soldiers teaming up with the Taliban could have easily fallen victim to.
.jpg)
The other special features available, a short “Making Of” presentation, a handful of completely unnecessary deleted scenes and an informative, likable commentary track from Chris Gorak give the impression that The Darkest Hour is something bigger than the dud it turned out to be. If you can look past its failure to turn into a pop culture phenomenon – despite obvious attempts to make that happen – you’ll find a dorky but entertaining genre romp that’s just dumb enough to feel like the product of intelligent grown ups who wanted to make something they’d have dug as widdle kids.
The Darkest movie overview
There are some legitimately interesting concepts at play in Chris Gorak’s The Darkest Hour. It features a creative alien design, plays with some cool scientific ideas and takes place in a fairly uncommon international setting. But filmmaking isn’t just about concept, it’s about execution. Glossing over all of the attention-grabbing elements, presenting flat characters and zero drama, the Russian-set science-fiction film is little more than a terrible mix of incompetence and missed opportunity.
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The story follows two young entrepreneurs, Sean and Ben (Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella), who travel to Moscow for a business opportunity. Undercut by a thieving competitor (Joel Kinnaman), the two protagonists arrive at a nightclub where the unthinkable happens: aliens made of pure energy unleash a global invasion. The men group with their competitor as well as two women they meet at the club (Olivia Thirlby, Rachel Taylor) and they do everything they can to survive the attack from the invisible enemy.
The Darkest Hour’s biggest problem isn’t undeveloped characters as much as it is the need to establish any in the first place. At the start of the film, Sean is painted as being a fast-talker and a bit childish, but even that disappears once the battle against the aliens begins. Without individual personalities, it’s impossible for the audience to have any sort of connection with the characters and they fail to even form authentic relationships between themselves because they are all so bland. The group does run into other survivors, but they are all just as one-dimensional as the leads and only serve to provide key pieces of exposition that keep the barely-there-plot moving. The only reason to cheer for these people is because they have managed to survive, and that’s just not enough.
Because we don’t care about whether the characters live or die, the movie is devoid of thrills and drama. The characters develop an interesting system to use light sources to tell if one of the aliens is nearby, but the movie never takes the extra effort to try and use that effect to build suspense or tension. The same problem exists on the emotional side. Even when one of the central characters is killed, the plot moves on so quickly that they might as well have never existed in the first place. The Darkest Hour is constantly in a rush to get somewhere even though it’s clear that it has no idea where it’s going.
The wasted potential in the film is sad bordering on egregious. While the Russian setting is meant to add fish-out-of-water tension, the only thing that makes the exotic locale special is one off-the-cuff line about the Cyrillic script. While invisible enemies are terrifying in theory, Gorak’s lazy direction and poor CGI results in the “heroes” being chased down hallways by what look like puffs of yellow smoke. The movie even commits the sin of killing off the one and only interesting/fun character within 10 minutes of his introduction. Every interesting aspect of The Darkest Hour is totally and utterly bungled.
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The only thing that Chris Gorak’s film has going for it is the pacing, but that comes because so much of everything else has been sacrificed. The characters are constantly moving from place and while the alien attacks aren’t effective in terms of establishing terror, there are enough of them to keep to keep the audience’s attention. The final product reeks of a script that started as an epic tale of survival in a foreign land and was slowly whittled down until only the action bare-essentials remained. The result is a product that movies quickly and is predictable, filled with flat characters, and has zero tension. Why would anyone want to see a movie like that?
.jpg)
The story follows two young entrepreneurs, Sean and Ben (Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella), who travel to Moscow for a business opportunity. Undercut by a thieving competitor (Joel Kinnaman), the two protagonists arrive at a nightclub where the unthinkable happens: aliens made of pure energy unleash a global invasion. The men group with their competitor as well as two women they meet at the club (Olivia Thirlby, Rachel Taylor) and they do everything they can to survive the attack from the invisible enemy.
The Darkest Hour’s biggest problem isn’t undeveloped characters as much as it is the need to establish any in the first place. At the start of the film, Sean is painted as being a fast-talker and a bit childish, but even that disappears once the battle against the aliens begins. Without individual personalities, it’s impossible for the audience to have any sort of connection with the characters and they fail to even form authentic relationships between themselves because they are all so bland. The group does run into other survivors, but they are all just as one-dimensional as the leads and only serve to provide key pieces of exposition that keep the barely-there-plot moving. The only reason to cheer for these people is because they have managed to survive, and that’s just not enough.
Because we don’t care about whether the characters live or die, the movie is devoid of thrills and drama. The characters develop an interesting system to use light sources to tell if one of the aliens is nearby, but the movie never takes the extra effort to try and use that effect to build suspense or tension. The same problem exists on the emotional side. Even when one of the central characters is killed, the plot moves on so quickly that they might as well have never existed in the first place. The Darkest Hour is constantly in a rush to get somewhere even though it’s clear that it has no idea where it’s going.
The wasted potential in the film is sad bordering on egregious. While the Russian setting is meant to add fish-out-of-water tension, the only thing that makes the exotic locale special is one off-the-cuff line about the Cyrillic script. While invisible enemies are terrifying in theory, Gorak’s lazy direction and poor CGI results in the “heroes” being chased down hallways by what look like puffs of yellow smoke. The movie even commits the sin of killing off the one and only interesting/fun character within 10 minutes of his introduction. Every interesting aspect of The Darkest Hour is totally and utterly bungled.
.jpg)
The only thing that Chris Gorak’s film has going for it is the pacing, but that comes because so much of everything else has been sacrificed. The characters are constantly moving from place and while the alien attacks aren’t effective in terms of establishing terror, there are enough of them to keep to keep the audience’s attention. The final product reeks of a script that started as an epic tale of survival in a foreign land and was slowly whittled down until only the action bare-essentials remained. The result is a product that movies quickly and is predictable, filled with flat characters, and has zero tension. Why would anyone want to see a movie like that?
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