The Darkest Hour (2011)

[akiratubo]

I rented this completely at random from Red Box, and am I ever glad I did.

Two young entrepreneurs are visiting Moscow to hawk their idea for a social networking site to potential investors.  While there, they visit a club where they meet two women, with whom they hit it off quite well.  Unfortunately, they receive the mother of all cock-blockings when an alien invasion suddenly happens!  Thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions of objects that look like flowers made of light descend from the heavens and promptly begin disintegrating people.  Will they survive?

The Darkest Hour starts off as if it's going to be a very crappy movie.  In rapid succession, it drops hints that it's going to be a Final Destination ripoff, only to change gears and seem like it's going to be a Hostel ripoff, then maybe a Cloverfield ripoff.  Hey, wait a minute ... are they just playing with us here?  Yes, they are.  The Darkest Hour uses every well-worn cliche in the book but -- it uses them properly, better than I've seen them used in a long, long time.  Best of all, everything is played straight.  There is little to no comic relief in this movie.  Not even the junkyard commandos who show up about 2/3 of the way through (who could have stepped right out of an 80s Troma movie) are played for laughs.  Nope, they are straight-up badasses, who only look silly out of basic necessity.

Where the movie hits it out of the damn park is in the way it handles its aliens.  Not since the original Predator has an invisible menace been handled so effectively.  I don't want to say too much about them, because they're something that really should be seen unawares.

The Darkest Hour is a true gem.  I didn't think anyone could make a movie like this anymore.

[indianasmith]

I enjoyed it, but not as much as you did! LOL