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Tuesday, April 16, 2024
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HOLLYWOOD THE DARKEST HOUR
EDITOR'S PICK
Rating:
*1/2
Alien invasion movies, a specialised Hollywood domain, works on few fundamental
premises -- characterisation of protagonists who the viewers relate to,
fierceness of aliens that includes their looks and finally the ability of humans
to fight back.
Despite having potential, The Darkest Hour becomes one of the
darkest hours of alien invasion movies because it goes wrong on all fundamentals
of this sub-genre.
Five young Americans are caught unawares in Moscow after an alien invasion
threatens to wipe out every thing that comes in their path. They must work
together if they have to survive. But how do you survive an enemy you cannot
even see?
One of the greatest reason why alien movies work is the way the writers and the
director tease their viewers. This film gets this right. The aliens are not just
seemingly invincible, but are also practically invisible.
The other things that work is when, like your protagonists, you are in the dark
about what is happening. As the film progresses, you regain your senses to first
survive and later to fight back. No such luck in this regard with this film.
Alien invasion films work when the aliens are revealed somewhere after the
mid-point of the film and the survivors gather their wits to fight back, even if
it is a seemingly losing battle. In this film, the aliens are revealed too late
and even then you merely get a scant glimpse of them.
Secondly, there aren`t enough chinks in their armour for humans to have hopes of
survival. Hence, the last bit where humanity shows hopes of fighting back, shown
here through a radio message, seem concocted and fantastic.
That the writing is so sloppy that not once in the film do you relate to any of
the characters or their struggles, only add to the woe of the film. Even a
no-brainer action film can work only when the characters and their motivations
are believable.
The only good thing about the film is its special effects. The effects are good,
but their charm fails because they aren`t backed by a good story to seem
believable. Setting the film in Moscow, instead of the usual New York or Los
Angeles that have been destroyed countless times by Hollywood, seems to be the
only `original` idea in the film.
What you thus have here is a mishmash of different ideas picked up from more
films than you care to remember which neither work collectively not on their
own.
