Studio: Summit Entertainment
Disc/Transfer Specifications: 1080p High Definition; 2.40:1 (Original Aspect Ratio 2.39:1); Region 1 (U.S.) Release Tested
Video Codec: MPEG-4 MVC
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Tested Audio Track: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Director: Chris Gorak
Starring Cast: Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella, Rachael Taylor
PLOT ANALYSIS:
I honestly didn’t expect much going into this, but my G-d…was
The Darkest Hour just terrible. In a genre that seems to have been defined by films such as
Cloverfield – that is, gathering a pack of twenty-somethings we really couldn’t care less about anyway and watching them succumb to “alien” attacks in different cities as they struggle to remain conscious enough to make it to their next Starbucks powwow – this has to be one of the worst, most mindless and rushed-to-screen examples to come out of late. Admittingly, I wanted to see this when it was released for the Christmas/New Year holiday season, as the clip depicting the German Shepherd and others being “blasted away” by an unseen energy ribbon of some kind just outside the Kremlin in Russia indeed seemed intriguing (not that I particularly enjoyed watching the dog disappear being the animal lover that I am – but the way I saw it, at least he wasn’t “harmed” or “injured” in any other sort of way). But, alas, like just about every other film I want to see theatrically, because of my ridiculously busy schedule, I missed it, forcing me to fall back on the possibility of receiving this title from my editor to review on either DVD or Blu-ray.
Popping in the Blu-ray Disc release of
The Darkest Hour last night, courtesy of the press folks at Summit Entertainment, I was glad we didn’t endure this steaming pile of horse dung in theaters amidst overpriced greasy popcorn buckets and idiots iTexting and iSexting on their phones, or whatever it is these young morons do today to distract and ultimately annoy the adult population in locales such as restaurants and theaters; joining the ranks of the aforementioned
Cloverfield and other alien attack potboilers as of late such as
Skyline and
Battle: Los Angeles, Chris Gorak’s
The Darkest Hour takes a slightly different approach to this genre and replaces large, physical alien beings and ships with those that take the form of electric energy ribbons of some kind – the notion is ridiculous and almost laughable, reminding me very much of that little tongue-in-cheek horror flick
Ghost in the Machine, in which a killer made his way through electric currents to torment and kill his victims in creative, interesting and sometimes downright gruesome ways (who can forget the microwave “skin boiling” scene?). But at least
Ghost in the Machine had sexy blonde babysitters showing tits to the young kids they’re watching plus some crafty gore sequences –
The Darkest Hour had no such benefit in its corner. Instead, we get a group of, for the most part, nobody’s, set amidst the backdrop – for whatever reason – of Moscow, fending off invisible “attacks” by “alien energy” waves that alert their attackers of their presence by turning on lamps and light bulbs. You think I’m kidding? I’m not.
Forget the alien invasion thing for a minute – the subplot of this ridiculously non-creative, dull, lifeless joke of a sci fi film has two Facebook creator-types (i.e. two young egotistical douche bags totally ahead of their time and acting like jackholes because of it) that are taking their “virtual/cyber” creation to a firm in Russia to capitalize on their success with their marketing. One of these a-holes is a Jack Black lookalike from the top down, while the other…well…you know how it goes…because the
other guy is taller, he’s considered the “hotter” one by the girls they eventually meet in the story, and later connect with to survive the alien “attack” (which many of them don’t do so proficiently).
Oh, my friends, you
do know the type – dressed in mismatched, ill-fitting clothes (one of them actually sporting a dress coat over a T-shirt) and looking like they just woke up from a six-day coke and booze bender completely disheveled and unkempt (but, of course, still “sexy” and “hot” and just “oh so delicious” to the idiotic female population of our current demographic), the two Facebook types make their cocky way to the boardroom in Russia where they are supposed to pitch their idea. To their dismay, when they get there, a meeting is already in full-swing, with some egotistical power suit type at the lead, informing the American boys their services are no longer needed, and that they came to Moscow for nothing. In a nutshell, this prick has stolen their idea and pitched the concept before they could get there. Enraged and embittered, the boys hit the Moscow nightlife circuit, looking to unwind and blow off some steam – and maybe a couple of minidresses clinging to the tight gyrating bodies of some really smokin’ Russian ladies of the night.
A second subplot develops in which the two American “cyber entrepreneurs” meet up with two chicks in this nightclub they’re drinking in (it’s in this sequence that one of the two sexy chicks says to her blonde friend how the taller of these two douches is the “hotter one” per usual social standards of our totally ****ed-up society) – and then all hell breaks loose. Suddenly, the lights of the club go out, the music stops and the young macho gents and sluts passing themselves off as “ladies” are whisked away by some sort of invisible energy attack – at first, the appearance of these “alien” invaders takes the form of buzzing, crackling electro-charges in shades of yellow. As they approach the people they want to “suck up,” the charges engulf them and the humans are turned into black, cloudy remnants quickly disintegrated altogether. The approach is different and unique, I suppose, compared to the other alien invasion stories over the years – and G-d help us if something like this ever happens – but it did remind me of the tripod attacks in
War of the Worlds when people were getting “zapped” and “calcified” by the alien rays as they stomped through that New Jersey town…still, there was something that just wasn’t…I don’t know…executed well enough here; where the tripod attack in
War of the Worlds was terrifying to watch, as were the scenes in
Independence Day when that came out, the “energy cloud” attacks in
The Darkest Hour just weren’t interesting or frightening to say the least.
At any rate, if you’re still reading and are remotely interested, the two chicks and the two American pricks team up with another survivor of the alien attack at the club, the same a-hole who screwed them at the meeting for their product just earlier that day. The thing is, this colossal prick can understand and speak Russian, and they are all in dire need of that in their situation. The group makes their way to safety in the catacombs of the club, only to eventually climb back out to find nobody around – every person in the club has been wiped out by the energy attack, and it appears they may very well be the only people alive anywhere at all, as when they take to the empty Russian streets and eventually to the square outside the Kremlin, there is nothing but burned out buildings and cars to be seen. It’s in one of these sequences outside the Kremlin that a German Shepherd is seen running through the square, barking at an invisible entity in front of him – when suddenly he’s whisked away by the black and gold “energy cloud” that breaks him into microscopic elements and then makes him disappear. It’s also around this time in the plot that these idiots discover the connection between these “aliens” and electricity – so they devise some scheme to wear light bulbs around their necks so they can tell when the “aliens” are approaching (i.e. their light bulbs will illuminate). Got that?
Eventually, the band of survivors meet up with a band of other Russian survivors they run into who are heavily armed with specialty weapons and metal coverings to “fend off” these electrical alien attacks – even their horses are adorned with metal shields and the like. As another attack wave is poised to strike the now banded together groups, the Russian men the kids stumbled upon stand their ground, firing back at the “attackers” and eventually driving them back through varying weaponry and methods. From that point on, some ridiculous hijinks ensue, including the group running into a crazy Russian chick toting a gun who allows them to stay in her “hideout” created by some even nuttier, out-of-balance Russian electrician who has encased his apartment in steel bars and wire to protect himself and the girl from the “aliens.” (actually, I believe they run into this chick and the electrician
before running into the “military” guys with the guns and metal encasings, but does it really matter? This film sucked). Further, this electrician has theorized that these attacks are definitely based in electric current (like we didn’t know that already) and he has created a gun that can fire “microwaves” which disrupt the charge of these attackers, rendering them susceptible to gunfire and human attack/response. You know that in all these alien invasion tales, there has to be one human that discovers the weakness of the alien – no matter the technology or how advanced it is over ours – and comes up with a way to fight it/them…
CONTINUED BELOW...
