Director Chris Gorak‘s 3D sci-fi film that tanked in theaters around Christmas time last year doesn’t have much value on Blu-Ray. The Darkest Hour is still a stinking pile of crap that is barely watchable thanks to Emile Hirsch. Everything else seems rushed, half-baked and copied from another shitty sci-fi film. Alien invaders have never looked so invisible and harmless before. Watching The Darkest Hour is a guaranteed headache inducer that’ll have you pulling your hair out by the end credits.
Sean (Emile Hirsch) and Ben (Max Minghella) travel to Moscow for a business venture. When they realize their business partner has screwed them out of an idea that they came up with they decide to have a night out on the town. While drinking and partying they run into two girls named Natalie (Olivia Thirlby) and Anne (Rachael Taylor). The two pairs join together and continue drinking and partying, but little do they know that an alien invasion is slowly starting to happen.
These foreign invaders come in an invisible cloak with a lightning bolt-looking energy charge that grabs innocent civilians and turns them into ashes within seconds. They’re intimidating creatures that have one thing on their agenda; consume all of Earth’s power. They travel town by town, eating every source possible.
Ben, Sean, Natalie and Anne are some of the few survivors left across the globe. They do their best to keep hidden, but like most idiotic groups of mindless excuses for human beings, they stumble into one too many close situations.
The Darkest Hour follows their every move and it’s not as exciting as it sounds. It’s actually a laughable experience that feels like there wasn’t a script on set. These despicable characters do the most moronic things throughout the film and it gets to a specific point where you can’t wait to watch an alien slaughter and zap them into tiny pieces. If you thought Skyline was bad then you might want to check out The Darkest Hour, because it makes Skyline look like an Oscar winner.
Not one single thing about the film feels thought out or competently rendered. The acting ranges from horrendous to stiff as a board, with Emile Hirsch trying his best to play a tough guy. Sorry kid, you’re just not cut out for that yet. Minghella, Thirlby and Taylor are just as bad.
The CGI even feels rushed. The aliens poke their heads out from behind the invisible shield every so often and when they do they don’t blend in with the environment at all. The colors are way off and it’s distracting and unacceptable.
If you can’t give us a good story then give us some good acting. If you can’t give us either of those then give us some damn good effects (Skyline‘s only defense), but if you can’t even do that than what’s the damn point?
The Darkest Hour is a deliberate time-waster and another one of those pointless 3D attempts that fails to bring you into the action, because there isn’t any action to be brought into.
The 1080p video transfer is a step in the right direction. Colors don’t really shine or impress, but they meet the expectations. The 3D transfer is notably darker and lacking of any real effects that pop off the screen, but I’ve seen worse. The biggest problem with the disc is the film itself. There’s just nothing to look at and the transfer replicates that problem.
Thank God the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track is better. It’s full of mixed surrounding effects and alien noises. Dialogue is cleanly understood and loud, while alien zapping and various added effects creep up through the back channels. Say what you will about the film, but its audio track is impressive.
The disc comes with an okay set of special features. It’s your basic package. Here’s a full list below:
- 2D & 3D Versions of the film
- Survivors (HD)
- The Darkest Hour: Visualizing an Invasion (HD)
- Deleted & Extended Scenes (HD)
- Audio CommentaryÂ
There’s really no reason to own The Darkest Hour. To be completely honest with you there’s really no reason to ever watch the film. Die-hard Emile Hirsch fans will want to stay far away and everyone else should already know better. It’s a terrible excuse of a movie that somehow got made and released theatrically.
I’m not sure what the studio was thinking, if they were thinking at all.
The Blu-Ray looks good and sounds great, but the special features are your basic rundown of stuff like a featurette, audio commentary and deleted scenes. There’s nothing else to dig into and director Chris Gorak must have figured that out upon completion of the film.
