Today's Review: The Darkest Hour

False. This move takes place over several hours, and is itself more than an hour long. Which hour is the darkest? We'll probably never know.

The Darkest Hour is a Russian movie made by Russian people in Russia, that stars Americans. Go figure. Well, said Americans are visiting Russia to promote their idea for a social networking website exclusively for clubbing douchebags, but their plans are somewhat scuppered by an alien invasion. But these aren't your ordinary gun toting big headed guys, they're invisible, are horny for electricity and disintegrate humans with a single touch. Thankfully our American heroes survive somehow, and we follow them the rest of the way through abandoned "Moss-cow" streets as they attempt to find survivors.

In theory, The Darkest Hour has a pretty cool premise. There's definitely a constant feeling of suspense when you realise that these aliens are invisible and could be anywhere, but that feeling is constantly ruined by the fact that the characters just start running through places after they assume it's all clear, which it pretty much always is. If there were invisible aliens everywhere that could envelop me within a second, I'd be scared to even move. This isn't the only stupid move the characters pull, for example the part where they don't realise a bridge has been destroyed until they're literally standing at the edge of the hole. I'm sure I could overlook some of their slip ups if I actually found them likeable in any way, but they're just generic teenagers running around screaming and generally being unsafe, yet somehow surviving.

I figured at the beginning that there must have been some lazy effects guys working on this movie when they all agreed that the aliens should be invisible, but to be fair to them they had to make a crap load of people turn to ash. So yeah, the effects are probably the best thing about this movie, with all the explosions and bolts of energy and people dying. It's just that everything else is so half assed. The plot is cliched, the characters are boring, this is just mindless Hollywood stuff. It's a quick fix for anyone who's really into alien invasion stuff, but mostly it's a good idea made into a sub par movie.

My rating: 2/5