'The Darkest Hour' starring Emile Hirsch and Olivia Thirlby - feature trailer review
The Darkest Hour Directed by: Chris Gorak Starring: Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Joel Kinnaman Rating: PG-13 Release Date: December 25, 2011
TRAILER SCORE: 6/10
Thoughts by TSR: I just realized I have been inadvertently avoiding the marketing for this one. Sometimes I steer clear of trailers because it’s a film I want to go in knowing nothing about, but that’s not the case here. It’s simply because I didn’t care – especially not after recent alien invasion films like Skyline, Cowboys & Aliens, and Battle: Los Angeles left a bad taste in my mouth. Even now that I’ve seen a bit of decent looking footage from The Darkest Hour, I still can’t work up much excitement.
This trailer doesn’t actually feature any dialogue, but it’s still pretty easy to figure out that the plot follows some young people in Moscow trying to survive an alien invasion. The hook here is that the electrical aliens are mostly invisible. That aspect works for me since things are often more frightening when they are unseen. The issue is when the aliens are seen, such as the very brief shot at the end of the trailer. It kind of reminds me of a smaller scale Parallax from Green Lantern, and while I didn’t hate that film as much as some, it’s still not an ideal comparison.
While I’m not sure how well I think the club music goes with seeing people and dogs get disintegrated, it does add a propulsive quality to the trailer that I hope the film maintains. Speaking of the people disintegrating, this kind of seems to revel in those deaths. I get that some of the more impressive visuals come from the way people (and that poor dog) are done away with, but over the 90 seconds it grew a bit tedious.
I like Emile Hirsch and Olivia Thirlby, so their presence helps raise my interest ever so slightly. I’m certainly not hotly anticipating seeing this one in theaters – especially not with the end of year release date – but I might check it out eventually.