logan j. fowler and bill bodkin debate the invasion thriller …
Theater, Rent, No Thanks, Undecided? Undecided.
The trailer for The Darkest Hour leaves me on the fence about checking it out. On one hand, the threat-aliens using the power supply of Earth to attack — provide a new kind of scare tactic for the heroes of the film, and more suspense for the audiences. I also like how there’s not a lot of big name actors in the film, sans Emile Hirsch, which makes the realness of it all more authentic. Although, not having established actors may also be a bad thing. To continue on from that note on the negatives, the film could be just be a big cheese fest and bad like Skyline was, and for a film called The Darkest Hour, the movie is far too bright in tone to seem pulse pounding. But who knows?
I could be totally wrong on my latter points, and the use of weaponry did bring back memories of Ghostbusters/Little Monsters (remember that flick?) as the group trying to save the planet needs electricity to seek out the power the aliens are using, and in turn are armed with these “electricity guns” of sorts. So that helped a little, as the movie may ride on an indirect nostalgic factor. Or, you know what. I may be totally over thinking it. Who knows? In any case, I’ll see what the buzz is on The Darkest Hour before I make any final decisions.
— LJF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf9RIKbKpIo
Theater, Rent, No Thanks, Undecided? Rent.
The Darkest Hour is either going to be one of two movies — a sleeper film or a complete waste of time. My feeling: It’s going to be a sleeper. I have a lot of faith in Emile Hirsch. He’s shown that he’s not just all indie street cred, he really showed he can handle himself in a big budget project in the underrated film Speed Racer. He can make overly dramatic popcorn flick dialogue work and he is credible in action sequences. And going back to his indie street cred, we know the guy can act. Another actor I’m excited to see in this film is Joel Kinnaman of The Killing. This guy was flat out awesome in the series, so it’ll be interesting to see how he’ll be portraying someone who isn’t a Seattle cop. Going into the film, we’ve got two solid actors, which is more than one can say about a lot of alien invasion flicks.
The real concern here is the plot. How will The Darkest Hour stand out from every other invasion film? The invisibility aspect of the aliens is intriguing but not something that’s drawing me to the theater over some of the other big-budget flicks coming out this week. There’s a chance the plot could just be super lame, so I’d rather not drop my cash on this film as opposed to say M:I4, Tintin or Dragon Tattoo. However, when the film does make it to DVD, I’m definitely going to invest my time and money into The Darkest Hour.
— BB
