The Darkest Hour (2011)

Directed by: Chris Gorak | 89 minutes | action, horror, science fiction | Actors: Emile Hirsch, Rachael Taylor, Olivia Thirlby, Joel Kinnaman, Max Minghella, Dato Bakhtadze, Yuriy Kutsenko, Artur Smolyaninov, Pyotr Fyodorov, Nikolay Efremov

Humanity has had a hard time in movies on more than one occasion. Often it is aliens, as for example in ‘Independence Day’ (1996), who try to wipe out our species. In some cases, such as ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ (2004) or in ‘2012’ (2010), it is the Earth itself that forces humanity to pull out all the stops to survive. In ‘The Darkest Hour’ humanity gets a completely new enemy. Although according to the makers of the film (directed by Chris Gorak) it is an alien race attacking Earth, it is safe to say that the enemies in ‘The Darkest Hour’ are not in any fields or roads on aliens – or rather, the way we think aliens look – seem. They are really nothing more than orange lights (which you can only see when they are near electricity) that descend on the earth and try to destroy it with their all-destroying powers.

The choice for these enemies has already been mentioned as the biggest problem of the film. The ‘aliens’ aren’t creepy at all. That they are largely invisible is not the biggest problem, there is simply nothing scary about orange sparks and rays of light. In addition, you don’t get to know anything about the enemy and the reason for their attack on Earth during the film. Only at the end is something quickly mumbled about minerals they want, but the how and what is never clear. To get a bit of a feel for the invisible enemy, the makers have chosen to film some short scenes through the eyes of the enemy. This only works half way, although you do get an idea of ​​what the enemies see, but you will not get to know more about the ‘aliens’ in the film.

‘The Darkest Hour’ certainly has its catchy moments, but these are simply far too few. For example, the setting of the film (Moscow) is certainly well chosen. Moscow feels a bit more refreshing than New York or any other American city. Furthermore, the middle part, in which the five survivors of the first attack (Sean, Nathalie, Ben, Anne and Skyler, all extremely superficial characters) go in search of other survivors in the completely destroyed city: the havoc and loneliness of the city is beautifully portrayed. And while the story itself doesn’t do much more than deal with the themes of hope and humanity’s will to survive, there are some surprising scenes later in the film.

Unfortunately, as already mentioned, the above moments are much too sparse to make ‘The Darkest Hour’ something really beautiful. Above all, the film lacks a strong identity of its own. At first, when friends Sean (Emile Hirsch) and Ben (Max Minghella) arrive in Moscow, it feels a bit like a comedy. When the aliens arrive (this happens soon after the start) the film tries to become a thriller and towards the end it becomes a bit of a mix between science fiction and action. Unfortunately, none of these elements is really well worked out. For a comedy it is simply not funny enough and for a thriller there is really too little threat. An invisible enemy can be quite exciting but in ‘The Darkest Hour’ you never have the feeling that something is really going to happen and when it does you usually don’t care. If aliens exist anywhere in the universe, one can only hope that these creatures are a bit scarier than the aliens from ‘The Darkest Hour’.