Just the Ticket #44: Cinema's Darkest Hour
Well, they say there's no rain in the forecast here until Friday, so I'll be back to full-time backbreaking tomorrow. It's night here in Central Washington, so I think it's the perfect time to get in my review of The Darkest Hour.
I'm not even going to grace this post with any Amazon links because this movie and any others I mention in reference to it are not worth your money, whether hard-earned or ill-gotten.
It starts out at a good pace, properly introducing the victims-to-be (a pair of post-graduate software developers, their underhanded Russian boss, and two BFF's on a backpacking trip, among a city full of others), and even manages to hold interest for a few minutes more as Moscow is invaded by invisible, spherical energy beings that can shoot electric tentacles out of their bodies, shatter glass, fly, disintegrate carbon-based life forms, and direct columns of fire at innocent bystanders one moment, yet are deterred by glass and fire and need to use the stairs for the majority of Darkest Hour. Oh, and they can't phase through walls or iron bars, either.
It seems the creatures' strengths and weaknesses change as the plot of the movie requires, and the creatures themselves (once we are given a peek through the energy barrier protecting them) are poorly rendered and look like rejected designs from the Pokemon library.
What follows (and sadly, comprises) the initial invasion sequence is a lot of running, hiding, screaming, shooting, and dying without much of an explanation as to what "those things" are doing on Earth (in a truly unoriginal twist of self-stifled creativity, it turns out they are aliens eliminating our opposition to them strip-mining the planet, which is still going on in the movie's "happy" ending).
I'm just happy it ended at all.
F-
Now that war has come to Earth in The Darkest Hour, stay tuned for the next issue when Earth goes to Mars in Disney's John Carter.
It starts out at a good pace, properly introducing the victims-to-be (a pair of post-graduate software developers, their underhanded Russian boss, and two BFF's on a backpacking trip, among a city full of others), and even manages to hold interest for a few minutes more as Moscow is invaded by invisible, spherical energy beings that can shoot electric tentacles out of their bodies, shatter glass, fly, disintegrate carbon-based life forms, and direct columns of fire at innocent bystanders one moment, yet are deterred by glass and fire and need to use the stairs for the majority of Darkest Hour. Oh, and they can't phase through walls or iron bars, either.
It seems the creatures' strengths and weaknesses change as the plot of the movie requires, and the creatures themselves (once we are given a peek through the energy barrier protecting them) are poorly rendered and look like rejected designs from the Pokemon library.
What follows (and sadly, comprises) the initial invasion sequence is a lot of running, hiding, screaming, shooting, and dying without much of an explanation as to what "those things" are doing on Earth (in a truly unoriginal twist of self-stifled creativity, it turns out they are aliens eliminating our opposition to them strip-mining the planet, which is still going on in the movie's "happy" ending).
I'm just happy it ended at all.
F-
Now that war has come to Earth in The Darkest Hour, stay tuned for the next issue when Earth goes to Mars in Disney's John Carter.
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