The Darkest Hour (2011) film review.

Review: 1.5 out of 5.

Of all the highest grossing films of 2011 I have watched, the film I reviewed is definitely the lowest, at least critically. The Darkest Hour was so bad, I almost slept throughout the entire film. That is not me exaggerating, I assure you. If any of you watched Skyline, this is a lot worse. I won't go into specifics right now, but I'll go into the background detail along the way.

Released 25th December 2011, a non-Christmas Day Special guarantee, the Russian-American production was directed by Chris Gorak and produced by Timur Bekmanbetav (Wanted) and ran a tedious 89 minutes. The motion picture with its tag line "Survive the Holidays" followed two young American men, Sean (Emile Hirsch) and Ben (Max Minghella) who travel to Moscow to sell their very own software to the company, headed by a Swedish businessman. Unfortunately, their passion project has been ripped from them (cough Social Network) and were thrown out. Sean and Ben start to woo beautiful women in the company, how convenient both the women they end up with, Natalie (Olivia Thirlby) and Anne (Rachael Taylor) are also American.

Fast-forward 15 minutes later, everyone looked outside at the night sky as a sudden glow appeared just when many aurora balls of light fell down. An invasion began to ensue as invaders protected by force fields ravaged the area, vaporizing every man, woman and child who got in their way. They proceed to consume the humans electrical resources.

Good:

It was hard to note anything great about the film, what I do appreciate is the concept they were going for, which is an alien invasion from Russia's perspective and the fact these creatures are far beyond humanoid and more so another plane of existence, which is raw energy. The length of the production gone into the film was not the best and is satisfactory, but the potential, basic, premise fell very short in the actual interpretation.

Bad:

There were many things that were bad about the sci-fi that is hard to muster in one go. First of all, the script by Jon Spaihts was trite. I hardly think there was any structure at all in this film, it started off fine up until the arrival of the aliens but pacing went completely out of whack and was a drag all the way through. It was noisy, not contained and went hay-wire. Everybody went beserk including the main cast who was frighteningly 2 dimensional in personality, drive and reaction. It is like the actors who did these characters didn't even try. There is really nothing more to say here.

The film was so bad, even through the last half of the 2nd act that I couldn't watch it anymore. The direction was so apalling, by the time some of the characters teamed up with the Russian's and found a solution to their perdicament, that was it for me. If anyone saw this would damn well agree with me. It was undercooked and I grew sick of what they fed me.

Even the music was depressing, balled together with awful screams with sweet, fitting, executions. Sooner or later, you will tire of the executions and could not really invest in the characters. So much that you could hardly care if they lived or died. Most of all, I couldn't take any of the actors or director for that matter, seriously.

Overall:

The film had a descent premise, but was engrossed in trash; flat characters, lazy cast, futile script, poor direction and production that would of been great if a little more thought had gone into the movie instead of screams, overbearing slow pace and less flashing lights. Watch Kanye's music video, he'll give you tips on brightness and contrast. Don't bother watching this on 3D, your better off renting a cheap copy in your local DVD or Blu-ray store just to add to your collection. The next review will be Drake's second outing, Take Care LP.

- Written by Kbon.