The Darkest Dawn

I must admit, I'm a sucker for most found footage films. So whenever I come across one I've not seen (or even heard of) before, I have to give it a try.

Almost immediately I wanted to give up. The acting isn't great, but that's expected from these low budget films. My issue was how quickly everyone gives up. The mum goes to work and before it even gets dark, the rest of the family are sobbing for her and the main character is saying her goodbyes to her on the camera. Also, on the second day, the government announcement says that the world would surrender right now if they knew how.

The CGI is pretty good to be fair, other than the plane crash scene ... the perspective was horribly wrong. The plane crashed on the road a few meters from the camera.

Ashens was definitely unexpected. I've watched him for years on Youtube, so seeing him in a film other than The Proxy or the Gamechild was a nice surprise.

I tried to finish it, I really did, but I couldn't. It's not even a full length film and although there were fast action shots every 30 seconds, it felt agonisingly slow.

This got 5 star reviews on Netflix and I'm honestly not sure why. Terrible, over acting - if you can call it acting. Situation escalates quickly, unbelievably so. I've seen better acting in at my local youth theatre.

I generally like this genre but to do it right usually takes a decent budget, believeable actors, and logical plot line. The protagonist's video recorder must have had a nuclear fuel cell as its battery to last so long. Within days all that a huge mansion had in it to eat was a single apple. The human populous began to turn in upon itself almost immediately. One accurate hit from a tank could bring down a ship the size of a super star destroyer and the list of WTF moments goes on.

I added a star because they showed a CGI shot of 20 Fenchurch Street (the walkie talkie building) with a huge gash in it. That tower is a monstronsity so props for that. Otherwise, skip this one unless you are super bored.

This movie popped in my feed suddenly, with an intriguing description buried in the Thrillers section. For some reason it was either not listed or hidden in the Sci-Fi section, where on top I found a film called "Hungerford" with the tag "Teen Screams" that completely turned me off.

this film had an intriguing enough storyline and setup, and the main character Chloe was actually fun to watch and listen to. The film didn't bother with much in the way of build-up, as we're very quickly thrown into the main plot of "alien invasion" and we start with an almost red herring-esque tease of Chloe and her sister Sam shacking up in a tunnel with a very erratic and traumatized man who is prone to fits of rage and anger, but for whom Chloe and Sam depend upon for food and water.

The only other comparison to this type of setup I could think of was "10 Cloverfield Lane" but we are almost as quickly dissuaded from this by the arrival of a gang of snappy young men, including one named Cowen who behaves with such unusual and ill-timed élan that it was not even remotely shocking for me to discover the actor playing him also wrote and directed the film. The focus of the film is not on him long enough to make him out as a Mary Sue, but while he wasn't an unlikeable character, he was definitely among the least interesting of the group, while having significantly more camera time than the other least interesting character, Kipper.

Once this group gets together, the film starts to go through tropes and clichés without mercy, including the blatantly obvious "kid calling for help turns out to be an ambush" and the "lost group of soldiers with a woke commander who turn out to be bastards" that was more than just a little eerily reminiscent of the middle-end section of 28 Days Later.

Throughout it all, Chloe films everything and occasionally turns the camera on herself to narrate the events to her mother, who went out to work on the morning of the alien invasion and presumably is not coming back. These interludes don't have the same vim and vigor of the prologue camera monologues, which leads to an odd sort of attempt to contrast it that only makes it a bit weird.

Chloe was very happy, charismatic, and upbeat in the camera scenes before the big plot event happens, and, recognizing that a post-apocalyptic survival experience would be deeply traumatic and depressing to witness from the point of view of a 16 year old girl breaking down in front of us on camera, they decide that Chloe goes through these camera interludes with upbeat optimism much of the time.

Except that, for whatever reason, they don't seem to consider the events that unfold with regards to her tone. It's very understandable that she should be in good spirits for the first few camera monologues, but she also maintains that tone of cautious optimism even immediately after stabbing someone to death. It feels like something that was badly edited or else ill-conceived.

As a whole, the film was rather average and not very memorable, aside from Chloe. Apart from that, what makes this film more memorable to me is that, going back to the Sci-Fi section on Netflix, I saw "Hungerford" again, and realized that was a name used in this film repeatedly. Then I re-read the description and saw the name "Cowen" in it. Then I realized this movie is a "sequel" to "Hungerford" and without Chloe, I cannot imagine suffering through a movie led and narrated by Cowen. As I say that, I start watching the movie anyway.

Genuinely one of the worst films I have ever seen. No logic, awful script, terrible acting, horrible direction.

Normally I'm down for a B movie sci-fi but this film has no redeeming factors. Just awful. 1/10 because I can't vote zero.