The Darkest Hour (& a half that I've watched in quite some time)

Sigh. 

For a movie fan, few things hurt quite so much as a strong young director following up something great with something awful. Thusly do we get Chris Gorak’s blander than a low sodium rice cake dud The Darkest Hour after his positively brilliant Twilight Zone episode of a film Right At Your Door.

I am sad.

Quick Plot: Two boring-to-awful young software developers are flying to Moscow to pitch their new social networking website. One is played by Anthony Mingella’s son with the personality of mayonnaise. The other is played by the usually charming, here just irksome Emile Hirsch.

I do not know or care what their names are.

Okay, fine. You might think I’m being overly harsh on a film that’s just begun, but this, THIS is the opening scene:

Two American dudes are on an airplane. The pilot announces they’re approaching landing mode, prompting the flight attendant to kindly ask Emile Hirsch to turn off his mobile device. Rather than, you know, TURNING OFF HIS MOBILE DEVICE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, Emile Hirsch launches into a smarmy, poorly written (by Prometheus scribe Jon Spaihts, I say with shivers) monologue that I assume is supposed to be charming about how that’s actually a myth and like, have you ever TESTED that theory?

This man is supposed to be our hero.

I reach for the barf bag.

Once in Moscow, our duo learns that their Swedish partner has hijacked their idea and already sold it. Naturally, two ugly Americans mourn by heading to a hip Russian club where everyone is incredibly attractive, including a fellow American girl (Brunette) and Aussie (Blonde, and yes, that will be their names for the rest of this review because I DON’T CARE). They’re making painfully dull smalltalk when suddenly, orbs of light start falling from the sky and dissolving any living thing that comes into their zone.

It’s an alien invasion! I use the exclamation point because finally, something happens onscreen that makes me actually want to look up from my burrito to my TV screen. The design of the alien attack is actually quite original: rather than big tentacled creatures, the monsters in this case travel via wavelengths. They’re mostly invisible to the human eye, appearing as spots of light that will trigger electricity nearby. So that’s neat.

If only I cared about a single character the aliens were attacking. Our quartet plus the nasty Swede hide out in the club’s cellar as a time stamp—no, seriously—tells us they stay there for “Monday” and “Tuesday.” THAT is the kind of movie this is: one so inept in its script that it can’t express the passage of a small amount of time without blatantly spelling out WHAT DAYS HAVE JUST PASSED.

Anyway, our boring white people emerge from the cellar to travel the barren streets of Moscow, perhaps the one other glint of neatness in the drudge of an 89 minute film. Seeing the Kremlin all but empty IS cool, don’t get me wrong. But seeing that the only people inhabiting it are like coffee break stand-ins for Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield in The Social Network is just sad.

At a certain point, our “heroes” meet a band of Russian badasses who are actively fighting the alien light thingies. These dudes ride horses clad in Tupperware, shoot machine guns with proud Russian bullets, and carry a wonderful sense of personality so direly lacking in our main characters. Why oh why couldn’t The Darkest Hour be about THEM?

Chris Gorak’s previous film was a smart and effective indie called Right At Your Door, wherein a stay-at-home husband had to decide whether or not to let his wife inside during a nuclear attack after she had already been exposed to deadly fallout. It was challenging and scary, filled with wonderfully rich characters and a brilliantly drawn sense of doom done with little budget. The Darkest Hour, in contrast, is a big, ugly, and worst of all, BORING retread through alien invasion. The film was released in 3D and ouch does that hurt its appearance on DVD. While I do think the concept of the monsters is quite different, the execution comes off flat. When we finally see the creatures, we might as well be watching test effects reels from the ABC miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s Langoliers.

Except we’re not, because for all its faults, at least The Langoliers had diverse characters. Towards the end of The Darkest Hour, one character starts screaming for Natalie, Natalie, we can’t leave with Natalie! My notes:

“Who’s Natalie?”

She’s the Brunette. The Brunette who I know nothing about, nor do I care to learn. I don’t expect rich Tolstoy-esque writing from a sci-fi action thriller, but that doesn’t mean you can just give mildly attractive 20somethings directions to run, look scared, and occasionally cry and I’m supposed to care an ounce whether they survive or not, especially when they’re essentially asking other, more likable characters to put their OWN lives at risk in order to do so. Who IS Natalie? There’s some mention about an ex-boyfriend and her being valedictorian. The Blonde has an Aussie accent. Emile Hirsch sassed a flight attendant. Anthony Mingella’s son…exists.

I count myself amongst the fairly vocal contingent that thought Cloverfield was a groovy exercise hampered by dreadfully unsympathetic characters. Well folks, I take that back: compared to The Darkest Hour, the cast of Cloverfield deserve to win every Oscar and Nobel Prize known to man.

High Points

It’s mildly surprising when a few of our leads meet the Invisible Smoke Monster of Dissolving Doom. Of course, it’d be more effective IF WE ACTUALLY CARED

Low Points

Aside from pretty much everything, how about the fact that we’re never really given any chance to consider the millions of Muscovites who were wiped out in the initial attack? Our barely legal leads carry no weight with them (which is bad enough) but considering this film had access to some truly amazing parts of one of the most interesting cities in the world, you’d think they could establish SOMETHING worth noticing, like an abandoned ferris wheel at Gorky Park or a grand theater just emptied of its ticketholders. There’s never the single slightest sense that a genocide has taken place, meaning not only do we already NOT care about the survivors, but we have no real context as to who they even outlived

Lessons Learned

Young people make rash decisions

Always carry a Sharpee when traveling

Hey screenwriters, here’s a lesson: if you want the audience to immediately hate your hero, have your opening scene involve him harassing a perfectly nice flight attendant just trying to do her job. Guaranteed way to get us off his side

Rent/Bury/Buy

I was enthusiastically looking forward to The Darkest Hour and even felt slightly bummed to have missed its brief theatrical run. I LOVED Gorak’s last film, and since I spent 9 months in Moscow a few years back as an ESL teacher, the chance to see the city onscreen in one of my favorite genres was incredibly exciting. All this makes the utter dullness of The Darkest Hour positively tragic. This is a boring, uninspired, and poorly constructed film. Hardcore sci-fi nerds might appreciate the new spin on the alien forms, but that’s the extent of my recommendation. Towards the end of the film, our leads reach a boat and suddenly I started thinking to myself “Hey! I wonder if Haunted Boat is still on Instant Watch.” Now kids, Haunted Boat was without a doubt one of the absolute WORST films I’ve ever watched for this here blog, and yet I would have traded my full stash of Tootsie Rolls won in a piñata raid to switch endings just so I could at least enjoy some aspect onscreen. It might seem like I’m being overly hard on The Darkest Hour, considering I’ve given a pass to such hated works as the Nightmare On Elm Street reboo—er, remake and… But truthfully, this movie made me sad and angry. That’s a dangerous combination.

Knock Knock, Cough Cough

Few shows have held up quite as well as Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. It never ceases to amaze me how a TV program--perhaps one of the most time sensitive formats out there in the modern world of art--filmed when I was not even a glimmer in my elementary school aged parents’ eyes can still terrify, fascinate, and teach me so much about humanity, America, philosophy, morality, and the sheer awesomeness of Burgess Meredith.

But why bring up that black and white social landmark when today’s topic is 2006’s Right At Your Door? Mostly because this indie thriller is one of the closest examples I’ve seen of a modern tale with the Serling spirit. Tight as Shatner’s Kingdom of the Spider’s jeans at 96 minutes and suspenseful as watching a gremlin toy with a plane’s engine at 20,000 feet, this is an extremely well-made and truly tense film that combines modern fears with timeless human dilemmas.

That was awfully pretentious sounding, wasn’t it? Let me clear my throat of the toxins inside and continue.

Quick Plot: It’s a sunny day in LA when Brad (Rory Cochrane), an unemployed musician, kisses his career woman wife Lexie (Mary McCormack) goodbye as she heads down the freeway. Newly moved into their modest home, Brad plans on spending the day calling the cable company and unpacking. 

Remember the last movie you watched about cable installation? Didn’t think so (unless you’re a fan of those underrated gems, Stay Tuned and Cable Guy and if so, good for you)--which is probably why Right At Your Door has another storyline in mind. With nothing but a radio for audio entertainment, Brad soon learns that a bomb of mysterious nature has been dropped downtown. Because Lexie forgot to charge her phone (obligatory d’oh), Brad has no way of reaching her and can do nothing but frantically drive to roadblocks, grind his teeth, and return home to pace.

This is one of  the early decisions that instantly told me Right At Your Door was going to work. Brad is a regular guy, caring and concerned, but well-aware that he’s a human civilian. We’ve seen enough fantasy disaster films where mere mortals travel through apocalyptic landscapes on foot to ‘save’ their loved ones. In reality, if your wife is stuck at ground zero in one of the country’s largest cities, what can you possibly do? Yes, most of our instincts would be to get as close as we could to at least be near them, but deep down, even the most passionate lovers would probably realize the best solution is to sit home and hope.

Back at the house, the power flickers on and off but with no TV, Brad is stuck with radio news (interesting enough in itself at establishing true chaos without spending another dollar on the budget). The neighbor’s handyman breaks in and gives a little more info: a dirty bomb was dropped, releasing highly radioactive toxins now floating in the air. Homes must be sealed before the breeze turns and anybody who was near the blast is likely carrying a contagious, probably deadly viral strain in their bodies.

About 30 minutes into Right At Your Door, a character makes a shocking decision that I, like the Netflix sleeve, am about to spoil. This isn’t “the big twist” of say, Martyrs proportions, but if you really want to watch this film fresh--and I REALLY want you to--then leave me now and queue up your Instant Watch. I won’t give away the second major revelation, so those who don’t mind knowing a little more can stay, but the first is a key action that both surprises the viewer and determines the rest of the story. I simply can’t talk about the film without giving away this detail and you know what? I want to talk about this film.

Okay brave souls or those with poor reading skills, read on:

Windows coated in bubble wrap and duct tape, Brad chokes back tears as he seals the last entrance. Then Lexie, the love of his life and bank account of his existence, comes knocking.

He doesn’t open the door.

That’s right, the man who nearly crashed his van to find his wife has now had a little more time to fully digest the situation. And he knows. There’s his wife, coughing in pain and covered in gray dust, and Brad simply refuses to let her contaminate him or the stranger in the next room.

I loved this choice for its bravery (in, of course, its very cowardice). How often do we see a character act on his head instead of heart? My jaw dropped hard when I realized Brad wasn’t going to cave in, even for the women he’d just spent an hour pre-mourning.

Back to the story, Brad and Lexie, now separated by a few layers of plastic, can’t quite look at each other the same way. As Lexie slowly accepts this, the poor hacking beauty is now also faced with what seems like imminent, phlegm-filled death. Writer/director Chris Gorak handles this in a truly human manner, allowing McCormack plenty of room to show a normal woman coming to realize her fate. What would you do if you could feel the clock ticking in each breath? Call your family to hear their voices, knowing they’re hearing the pain in your own? How do you deal with the man you love choosing his own life over comforting you when you need him the most? There’s no time to argue, but also not quite the spirit to put it behind you and savor the final joy left.

There are no major effects or battles in Right At Your Door, but Gorak is masterful at creating an atmosphere of impending doom and state-wise chaos. On a shoestring budget, he manages to make you believe this normal couple is experiencing 9/11 in their backyard. Hearing the radio reporter with a muffled voice is all you need to visualize a frantic Diane Sawyer shouting to her microphone with her face covered in a cardigan. Anyone who’s a sucker for gas masks gets all they need when Darth Vader voiced soldiers stop by. And while I wouldn’t dream of spoiling anything further, I’ll end by saying that the final turn is a twist worthy of that cigarette smoking upstate NYer himself.

High Points

From the music to the camerawork, an extended scene where Brad drives through the almost-chaotic suburban streets is extremely effective, letting you feel every pump of his racing heart as the disaster around LA fully sets in

Like many a Twilight Zone episode, Right At Your Door relies heavily on its everyday core characters in an extraordinary situation, and both McCormack and Cochrane deliver sympathetic and natural performances the whole way through

No spoilers here, but leapin’ lizards did i love that ending!

Low Points

The introduction of a mysterious mutual friend named Rick feels like both a distraction from our core characters and an awkward plot convenience to get from point A to B

Lessons Learned

Meet your newest best friends: duct tape, plastic wrap, Ziploc bags, and a truly handy handyman swiped from your new neighbor

Avoid dealing with your mother-in-law in the event of a national disaster

If zombie survival has taught you nothing, let this be the film that convinces architects that ground floor windows are death sentences to homeowners

Rent/Bury/Buy

It’s been a few days since I watched Right At Your Door, and writing about the film has made me like it even more. As a 96 minute Instant Watch, there’s really no reason to not watch it when you feel like you need a solid fix of human drama with paranoid leanings. It may not fit into the typical definition of a ‘horror’ movie, but Right At Your Door is both thoughtful and scary in its own right. Twilight Zone fans may be especially impressed by how it ultimately succeeds. Chris Gorak shows a whole lot of skill all around, from the powerful instrumental score to the strong performances and tight script. It’s a simple story told well, and for a low budget thriller set in modern times, it’s definitely worth a buy if found at the right price, particularly since my extensive research (i.e., amazon.com) points to the DVD being refreshingly full o’ special features. 

Telly Savalas & Talking Tina, just 'cause