Young software designers Ben and Sean, portrayed by Max Minghella and Emile Hirsch, travel halfway around the world in the hopes of raising money from a few Russian investors to launch a new website, only to lose out to a Swedish rival, played by Joel Kinnaman.
That evening in Moscow, they decide to dance their problems away, and they are able to recruit two American women, Anne and Natalie (Rachael Taylor and Olivia Thirlby), to join them. These five find themselves caught up in a disaster that is beyond their wildest fears when brilliant clouds of light come tumbling from the sky and fade on the ground.
People gather merely to watch the lights because they reveal themselves to be invisible creatures that vaporize everyone in their line of sight without showing even the slightest mercy. The unique plot of this movie was one of the key factors contributing to its popularity with the audience.
Here, aliens are shown as a more intelligent and original concept rather than the generic aliens that can be seen in almost every film. Everyone should put this movie on their must-watch lists. It is a novel kind of action movie that stands out on its own.
Survive The Holidays – The Darkest Hour (2011)
Two Americans named Sean and Ben travel to Moscow to market and raise money for their original social networking service. Their aircraft experiences an electrical short circuit as they approach the airfield, but it rapidly regains power. When they get there, they learn that their Swedish business partner and colleague, Skyler, played by actor Joel Kinnaman, has tricked them and had closed a contract with their Russian clients using a clone software.
They enter a club feeling dejected and depressed where they meet Natalie, an American woman, and Anne, an Australian woman. All of a sudden, the lights in the club go out, and everyone runs outside. There, they observe what appears to be an aurora borealis. Light balls descend from the air and gradually fade away. When a police officer goes to investigate, he swiftly meets his demise.
People are terrified as the fearsome unseen beings begin hunting and murdering them. The movie was made in 3D rather than being converted after the shooting. When they chose to shoot in 3D, they added another 8 to 9 days to the shooting timeline.
For seven days, Ben, Natalie, Sean and Anne, along with Skyler take shelter in the club’s storage room. With most of their supplies gone, the gang intends to seek refuge in the American Embassy. The city is full of burning automobiles and cinders, but no one is around except for a suspicious elderly woman who cautions them about “the ghosts.” While Sean and Ben look for provisions in a police cruiser near Red Square, the others seek refuge in the neighboring GUM chain store shopping mall. A howling dog uncovers and confronts an extraterrestrial as they are examining the automobile, but is quickly killed. Sean and Ben successfully take cover behind the vehicle as the alien approaches, forcing the car’s siren and lights to activate.
The alien then moves on, and the men dash to the mall. Sean learns that led bulbs and other technology are a dead giveaway for aliens. The gang seeks refuge in a mall store. Natalie and Sean go looking for clothes to wear and nearly run into an extraterrestrial, who can’t see them through a wall made of glass.
Sean hypothesizes that the creatures can only perceive their electrical charge but cannot do it through glassware or other insulators, but are able to detect it through other materials. This movie’s production was halted for two weeks owing to the severe air pollution produced by the wildfires that engulfed Moscow in 2010 in August.
Three weeks later, it was finally restarted. Even with these precautions in place, smoke got into a number of shots and had to be erased digitally. The aliens only have sight using electrolocation, which means they detect the electricity in living beings by creating their own field of electricity. This also indicates that they are unable to see through glass, which is one of the clearest substances known to humans, because glass is not an electrical conductor.
The trio discovers the US embassy destroyed and deserted. Except for Skyler, everyone goes near the roof to obtain an overhead perspective. They discover a journal that informs them that the attack is global. They also discover a radio transmitting a signal in Russian and hear gunshots. Sean and Ben hurry outside to assist Skyler, the shooter, but the aliens slaughter him. The rest of them see a lamp in a neighboring apartment building and proceed to investigate, taking the radio they acquired with them.
They come upon a young lady named Vika and an electrical engineer named Sergei. Sergei has transformed his residence into a massive Faraday cage, shielding everyone from the invaders. He has also created a microwave rifle that destroys an alien’s protective shield, allowing it to be seen and destroyed. The communication from the radio, which Vika and Sergei read, states that a nuclear submarine named K-152 Nerpa is standing inside the Moscow River in order to transport surviving individuals to safety, but that it will depart shortly. Interestingly enough, this film was not pre-screened for North American critics.
While Sergei demonstrates the microwave gadget to the men, Anne, Vika and Natalie visit neighboring apartments to acquire provisions for the underwater expedition. An alien detects them outside of the makeshift Faraday cage and pursues them; Anne hesitates to follow Vika and takes a different path, leading Natalie to accompany her back inside. When they arrive at the house, Natalie seems unable to lock the door, allowing the alien to enter.
Sergei fires at the alien and discovers that it is simply dazed and not seriously injured. Sergei is killed by the alien as the rest flee through the fire exit. Anne hesitates once more and is slaughtered while attempting to flee. Natalie sets fire to the flat as they go down to meet Vika. Max Minghella and Emile Hirsch became fast friends on the set of this movie and remain so to this day.
The gang encounters a Russian police force with makeshift armor headed by Matvei, who manages to injure an extraterrestrial with conventional weaponry. Sean takes a portion of the body of the alien. The tiny police force was also able to construct another Faraday cage there at the Russian State Library.
Boris and his crew ultimately agree to assist the remaining four in reaching the submarine. The authorities believe the aliens are actually strip mining for metals that are conductive, since gigantic light beams can be seen burrowing all over Moscow. An extraterrestrial discovers them as they travel through the subway, and they flee on the lines. Vika conceals herself behind a column, unable to accompany the rest of them without being spotted. Ben assists her in descending to the lines, but is slaughtered by the alien.
The survivors reach a damaged patrol boat in the river and float downstream to the submarine waiting for them. The boat gets close to the submarine but goes aground. A fresh laser beam crushes a massive apartment building directly next to the river as they struggle to push free, forcing the boat to subside. Sean and the cops swim in the direction of the submarine, but when they arrive, they realize Natalie has disappeared.
In a bus and railway yard near the river, they observe a flare launched from Natalie’s flare gun. Sean is desperate to find her, even if it means foregoing his opportunity to escape. The cops agree to assist him in rescuing her. After expressing doubts about the rescue, the Russian crew in the submarine assists by developing a powerful microwave gun with heavy duty batteries.
After the crew destroys one alien, Sean discovers Natalie in a bus while the cops and Vika use microwave rifles and water to eliminate three more extraterrestrial invaders. As Sean prepares to exit the bus along with Natalie, an alien boards, shuts the door, and launches the bus racing around the parking lot. It grips Natalie’s leg. Sean, however, uses the microwave pistol to shatter the alien’s barrier. When he tosses a fragment of the injured alien he had gathered earlier, it kills the unshielded alien, revealing the creature’s vulnerability. The two come to a complete halt on the bus, narrowly avoiding a collision.
After going back to the sub, the police squad decides to remain and battle for the city, as Matvei informs them that the battle has just begun. Sean, Vika and Natalie intend to teach the rest of the planet about the aliens, including the microwave weapons and their sensitivity to bits of other deceased aliens.
Natalie and Sean, the only members of the original gang who are still alive, almost kiss in the submarine but Vika gives them a look and breaks the sexual connection in a light-hearted scene. In the last sequence, as the submarine sails across the Caspian Sea, the people in the vessel discover that civilians in Paris were able to demolish an alien mining structure, and that many resistance organizations are battling in various cities throughout the world.
A Mysterious Race Of Extraterrestrials
The plot of The Darkest Hour would be familiar to everyone who has watched an alien invasion film before: dangerous beings from space crash land on Earth and begin slaughtering everyone. The aliens, however, are not your typical CGI bugs.
These aliens are refreshingly unique. They’re composed of “lethal wave energy,” according to Gorak, and are able to cauterize humans into ash. Essentially, these extraterrestrials are invisible energy beings who can sense electricity. The movie’s creative team’s imagination is astounding, and the concept drawings we saw for the film — and also the teaser — were full of interesting ideas about what a completely extraterrestrial race might be like.
As the aliens attack, they rain down on the world as luminous blobs designed like ball lightning by Gorak and his colleagues. And the very first thing that they do is deplete Earth’s electrical energy. Despite being thrown into an abrupt technology blackout, our heroes are able to use their technological knowledge to survive. And survival is really difficult. Gorak claims that the aliens can hook individuals with electrical tentacles, as seen in the trailer. It’s as though lightning forks are seizing the characters and burning them into ash curls.
As the invasion continues, humans discover that the aliens are comprised of electromagnetic energy and that any species trapped in a wave-blocking Faraday Cage could potentially avoid the extraterrestrial’s sense of detection. The humans also discover that the typically invisible aliens may be seen since they make lightbulbs and radios to light up. We observed a scene in which the protagonists are tossing lightbulbs before them to figure out where the extraterrestrials are.
The film’s director, Gorak, flipped the typical paradigm in which night is frightening and day is secure. The aliens are undetectable during the daytime, but they may be seen at night, making light bulbs light up. We also get glimpses of our world through extraterrestrial eyes and discover how humans seem to the aliens. But it doesn’t imply we’ll be entering the alien command center or actually getting to know any one of them personally, as in District 9. These extraterrestrials are the adversaries, and that’s all. They are also depleting the entire planet’s energy resources, making them twice as nasty.
The aliens shown in The Darkest Hour are really a mystery species of extraterrestrial invaders. They have the gift of invisibility and cannot be seen by humans. They are also totally encased by a highly unbreakable energy barrier and move about by floating.
They are extremely strong and can create tentacles composed entirely of power that can coil around anything. They seem to have the ability to disintegrate everything they contact or are touched by, turning it into dust. Unlike most other extraterrestrials, they have the ability to sense electricity and observe lifeforms through the electric impulses created by the creature’s brain and all the other organs. They even have X-Ray vision and can see right through inanimate objects that conduct electricity. They also can shoot electrical balls, although it takes a great deal of energy to do so.
However, they do have certain limitations. Their presence sets off auto alarms and illuminates all light bulbs, including those that weren’t in the socket. They are unable to see through any kind of glass. Their protective barrier is only vulnerable to microwave radiation. Their real body, however, is far less resilient, as it is sensitive to both bullets and fire. Fragments from their own deceased hurled at the aliens can shatter the creature’s exoskeleton and destroy their flying capacity.
Why should you watch The Darkest Hour (2011)?
‘The Darkest Hour’ actually has a high level of entertainment value. One of several things we really like about this movie is that there is some uniqueness. Rather than just another American city, or perhaps Tokyo or London, we are witnessing an attack on Moscow this time.
Instead of seeing the people trying to run away and hide around the typical scenery of New York for the hundredth time, we are treated to an ‘unknown’ scenario with a lot of appeal. Another attraction is the alien beings. They are not your normal armored troops or ‘greys,’ rather they have a unique design and are formless masses of light. We were rooting for the protagonists to survive because there is just enough tension and excitement to keep things intriguing.
Will There Be A The Darkest Hour Sequel?
“The Darkest Hour” aired in a very limited number of theaters on 22nd December in 2011, in Russia as well as other Eastern European nations such as Hungary, Belarus and Ukraine. Three days after this, on 25th December in 2011, the movie had its big Christmas premiere in the United States and Canada.
Let us now discuss the potential for a sequel to ‘The Darkest Hour.’ Unfortunately, the movie received generally unfavorable reviews from critics and moviegoers. While hailed as the most entertaining worst film of 2011, reviewers were quick to point out the ridiculousness inherent in the perplexing sci-fi horror. While the audience appreciated the awe-inspiring visuals of a deserted Red Square as well as the visually stunning representation of the undetectable aliens, many viewers believed the film lacked an intriguing tale or a cast of fascinating characters.
Furthermore, although striving to be a lighthearted horror movie, the film lacks enough grossness to satisfy genre purists. Many films, however, manage to attain cult status despite receiving negative critical reviews, as the iconic ‘Scary Movie’ franchise is a prime example. Hence, we can safely say that the sequel will not be canceled because of the terrible critical reviews. ‘The Darkest Hour’ was a minor box office success globally, nearly grossing double its budget in the fifty-three weeks it was in theaters.
If the producers wish to revive the concept, they know there are people willing to swallow the endless creativity that the original movie brought to the table. Furthermore, the alien invasion sci-fi horror genre is known for its many sequels, and the movie, in this context, might very well see a second installment in the future. The possibility of a continuation cannot be disregarded, especially because the climax of the first film leaves the seed of a successor in the viewer’s mind.
In reality, the straightforward plot appears to be a type of prelude attempting to sell the viewer on the notion of the sequel. The film concludes in an ambiguous tone. Finally, when the submarine transports the survivors to an unknown place, the heroes learn that militant groups are retaliating against the invisible aliens. In the last scene, the courageous hero Sean declares with great insight, “This is where it all starts.” As a result, the screenwriter sowed the seed of a continuation in the minds of the audience.
Director Chris Gorak is more at ease when he does production design and art direction assignments, having worked on films such as ‘Minority Report’ and ‘Fight Club.’ ‘The Darkest Hour,’ is his most recent feature-length movie as of 2022. We don’t know if he is working on a sequel, but according to a Deadline article from 2017, the filmmaker took on the job of being the director of a sci-fi adventure film named ‘Attach.’ So, all things considered, a sequel to ‘The Darkest Hour’ is not quite improbable in the near future.