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So I decided to watch the Darkest Hour, a scifi movie about some electric aliens trying to take over the world, or at least get at our mineral supplies.
The movie starts off in earnest, introducing us to our bland and somewhat forgettable cast. Sean(Emile Hirsch) and Ben(Max Minghella) have traveled to Russia on a business trip to pitch their idea to a firm. Turns out they were stupid enough not to copyright their idea or have the firm sign an NDA(non-disclosure agreement) and so they do what any company would do in that situation, steal the idea. So being out of a deal and having wasted their time, they decide to drown their sorrows and gullibility, with booze and maybe some sex. They meet up with some other Americans, Natalie(Olivia Thirlby) and Anne(Rachael Taylor). Well I'm assuming American anyway, since Anne's accent seems to go in and out.
The aliens show up as balls of light and all hell breaks loose as they begin disintegrating people. The special effects in the movie is passable, nothing mind-blowing, but it does remind me of a somewhat higher budget direct-to-video movie. The coolest effect being when the aliens disintegrate someone, however this was already done in War of the Worlds and the effect is much better there.
Without getting too much into the plot, not a lot of character development happens, and its all very predictable. There are five main characters, and you can tell which two are going to die without fail. They also go by horror movie logic as well, you know, do the thing that makes little sense and defy logic and common sense as to make for a longer movie and provide more delicious drama. There was only one event in this movie that threw me for loop, and jerked me out of my lethargy, but it quickly went back to going through the motions. The characters follow stereotypes you're used to as well. Hero type, bland, white and heroic. The scared guy who will eventually put the whole group in danger. The love interest who will eventually need saving. The best friend of either the love interest or the hero who's sole purpose is to die and spur or inspire the hero to do something. The setting itself, Russia , in underused. Why set the movie in Russia if the main characters are American and the other two Russian characters speak English? Yes there's one other character, but he's called Dr. PlotDevice and is used to give the characters a way to fight the aliens. And yes, he's the stereotypical quirky genius. The setting is just watsed, and just seems like a cheap way of setting the movie in a city or wanting an exotic locale or somewhere which hasn't been done before.
The movie is also without any humor or any real drama or emotion. Or if there was I didn't see it. Which would have helped this movie a lot. As it stands its just very drab with bits of action. The acting is pretty bad as well. Not saying the actors themselves are bad, but the movie lacks direction and feels a bit aimless. Cinematography is dull, and really feels like a TV movie at points rather than a movie deserving of a theatrical release. The music was sort of there, I honestly don't remember any of it. This is my problem with the movie. Everything is just mediocre and passable. It never excels in any area, neither is it abysmally bad or even just bad. If it was abysmally bad there would be some entertainment from that at least, but no, its just, passable.
The are a lot of logical inconsistencies in the movie, like the way how the aliens behave and how they see you. For example, the aliens disintegrate people, and can fire hadokens(yea I'm calling them that). But when the plot calls for it, they conveniently 'grab' people with their electric wires and pull them towards them. Later on in the movie, one character sacrifices himself for a young Russian girl, who, wouldn't you know it, speaks English as well(how convenient). Instead of say, going near to her behind cover and getting her, the character goes up to her, only to push her about two feet away and gets killed. You have to see this to believe how stupid it was. That's okay though as the character was bland as hell with no development at all, so really, nothing of value was lost. There are other inconsistencies as well with the aliens and how they operate but really its just nitpicking at this point.
The movie is just bland really. Bland aliens, bland special effects, bland characters, bland action. Bland bland bland and mediocre. As much as I love scifi movies and wanted to enjoy this, it was just mediocre. But if you want to watch a scifi movie and have some time to kill I'd recommend something else, but if you've watched everything else, then you may want to check this out.
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