The Darkest Hour: Run of the Mill

Get ready you guys! Director Chris Gorak brings to the screen Emile Hirsch, and some other guy in the most riveting, exciting, actiony, blah… meh. I tried. This movie was not fantastic, but it wasn’t horrible either. It will most likely go down in cinematic history as one of the thousands of solid yet forgettable action/thriller films that fade into the mists of time after a respectable box office and a decent run on DVD.

I mean, it was cool that the movie took place in Russia. That’s new. And the visuals were stylistic. We’ve seen the gray post-apocalyptic twilight landscape before, but this one held its own despite that. And for such a minimal setting, there were a lot of amazing things to look at. And no, I’m not talking about hot chicks or bare chested dudes, but if you’re into the whole preteen-sexeh thing, there’s a little of it for you up in this hizzy. What I was actually referring to was the interesting use of light and visuals in this film.

You see, there’s these invisible aliens. And we all know that an alien movie has to have interesting looking aliens. Otherwise, it’s just Contact. So, how do you make an invisible alien look cool? Well that’s easy, you do it by proxy. That’s right, all you have to do is make the stuff around it look cool. Blam, a car stereo just went off—ALIEN! Sploosh, a neon sign flickers on—ALIEN!

But you know what, even though it sounds like it would be kind of fun to watch a bunch of kids lose their shit over a couple of Christmas lights, I have to hand it to them. Emile Hirsch and company really sell it. It’s hard to be terrified of the invisible without looking like a complete idiot, and this cast pulls it off… completely.

Now, you may have noticed that I’ve spent three paragraphs avoiding the discussion of this film’s story. This is because this film’s story is not bad. In fact, it’s quite decent. But that’s all it is. It’s such a tragedy when a B- story gets made. All the pacing is right, the scenes follow the way they should, the emotional connections and dissolutions happen like clockwork. It is precisely what it should be. Here’s a breakdown of the action:

-Plausible excuse to be in Russia
-Main characters are down on their luck to establish emotional connection with audience
-Hot girls give them the eye, perhaps their luck will change
-Aliens kill everybody
-Main characters hide with hot girls and the jerk that screwed them over in the beginning
-Wait till things quiet down, search for others
-Jerk sacrifices self for benefit of the group
-Blonde does something stupid to detriment of the group
-Interesting Russian characters (Alien killer and horseback militia) overlooked for boring leads
-Find a way to escape
-Last stand

Do you see what I mean? It’s all been done thousands of times before. So, this could be considered a writer problem where the predictability ruins any chance for greatness. But movies like this can also serve as a sort of blank-canvas medium, waiting for someone grand to shape them. And so, now I am back to blaming Emile Hirsch.

This movie could have been amazing if George Clooney or Hilary Swank played the lead, or Will Smith for that matter. Heck, even Hailey Joel Osmond would have been an interesting choice because he plays fear so well. But no such luck, there was this pervasive sense of adequacy that ran throughout. It needed just a bit more of a nudge.

Now that’s not to say that this movie isn’t worth watching (especially if you’re still under 25), because it is. It’s a decent date night flick or an acceptable “I don’t know, what do you want to watch” choice. But it is far from the ultimate super-cool alien apocalypse movie.