The Darkest Hour (12A) *

The Darkest Hour (12A) *

Dir: Chris Gorak

Starring: Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella

Synopsis: Five young people meet at a club in Moscow when the Earth is attacked. The aliens, invisible balls of energy, cut off the world’s electricity supply and incinerate any humans they come into contact with. The heroes must fight their way across the city to rescue with the Russian allies they collect on the way.

Verdict: The alien invasion genre certainly seems to be on the boom. Last year we had Skyline and Battle L.A, and this year we have The Darkest Hour and Battleship. From the trailers we can see links between Skyline and The Darkest Hour, and between Battle L.A and Battleship, but we’ll have to wait and see the links in the latter.

In scenes that seem to be plucked straight from Skyline, The Darkest Hour kicks off with glowing orbs of energy floating down from the sky. However, these orbs are here to kill people and take the planets resources rather than our brains. In other similar scenes, as the film progresses we see columns of matter being pulled into the sky.

Another aspect I noticed was when the alien orbs begun to rip people apart/incinerate them, I was reminded of the 2005 remake of War of the Worlds, with the similar end result as the heat wave used by the tripods. There don’t seem to be a huge number of original ideas in the film on the whole.

Trying to stop nit picking over copy-cats in the film industry, the movie isn’t that terrible. The slight change in plot to displace the characters from an American city or town to Moscow is a refreshing change, but the stereotypical American civilians who overnight turn into fighting machines is a bit clichéd.

Special effects wise, I chose to avoid the 3D version as the magic of the effect is wearing thin through some shoddy attempts at adding that extra dimension. However, the CGI isn’t too bad, though when you finally get to see past the aliens’ invisible armour they seem quite comic book-ish (Parallax in The Green Lantern sprung to mind).

While it is keeps you occupied for a while, the film doesn’t do too much to develop the genre as a whole.