Zombos Says: Good
Watching The Darkest Hour reminded me of the 1954 movie, Target Earth. The similarities would be sparsely marauding alien invaders, standardized and blandly irrational and frenzied survivors looking for a way out of a desolate city, and dialog written and delivered with the emotional intensity of one hand clapping.
Unlike Target Earth‘s robots from Venus (actually only one was ever shown menacing the survivors), The Darkest Hour has a few more CGI aliens conveniently rolling around in their protective invisible balls of armor, incinerating anyone in their path. I don’t recall why the robots invaded earth in 1954, but these ball-o-fire aliens of 2011 are plundering our planet for its natural resources in a drill, baby, drill paroxysm of destruction. You could do better for a holiday movie, but you could also do worse.
The alien-vision POV as people are hunted down conveys other-worldliness well enough on a budget, and the actors are only poorly written into their characters, although the stoic militia leader (Gosha Kutsenko) grinds out his “Moscow’s got our back” patriotism badly enough to make you groan. Given more to work with, I’d expect more acting, too.
Two young entrepenuers, Sean and Ben (Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella) wind up in Moscow after being fleeced by Skyler, a corporate wolf (Joel Kinnaman) who steals their idea for a mobile app that guides travelers to local hotspots of iniquity. So, of course, when survivors are surviving, Sean and Ben find themselves holed up with Skyler. Cue the we-hate-your-guts-but-let’s-get-through-this-first turmoil. Now add two girls, Natalie and Anne (Olivia Thirlby, Rachael Taylor) the boys run into in one of those hotspots, a resourceful old codger of a scientist who figures out the aliens can be toasted with a homemade microwave gun, some flimflam about a Faraday Cage to support the need for making their way to a nuclear sub waiting for survivors in the harbor–survivors with radios, anyway, who heard the broadcast–and a ragtag militia for comic relief (very little relief) fighting with their wits and whatever else they find will work against the aliens, and you’ve got almost a complete story, give or take some beats; enough to be watchable and guiltily enjoyable (like those Roger Corman Syfy movies).
That’s pretty much it. Chris Gorak directs the action with gusto, but he dozes during downtimes, and lighter moments aren’t deftly handled. Everything else, like the by-the-script bickering, the standard, doing stupid crazy tricks to get yourself killed moments, the not so surprising finding-by-accident ways to avoid the aliens, and a token patriotic ferver that makes Independence Day look like a masterpiece of rousing nationalism in comparison, will keep you waiting for more, which, in the long run, keeps you watching. Go figure.