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Some spoilers here and there. The last part will have my final, spoiler-free verdict.
This movie wasn't TERRIBLE, but it wasn't GOOD either. It started out good, at least interesting, and exciting. The effects where pretty stellar and it had me thinking "Oh my god!" when people got killed by those cool alien badies.
But the quality declines pretty quickly after they set you up. The characters feel flat and uninteresting, for one, especially the jerkass Skylar. They also get very genre savy, making guesses as to how and why the creatures function that sound much too scientific for a bunch of kids out clubbing. Granted, two of those kids are apparently software designers or similar, but the almost complete lack of backstory makes it seem like they are all just random people in Russia who wouldn't know anything about electromagnetics.
After a while I began to question the sanity of our protagonists. There are two major incidents that bother me:
1) After learning that electric devices turn on when the invisible aliens get near they adorn themselves with lightbulbs. But then they decide to only go out in the night time, because it is too hard to tell if the aliens are near in the daylight. Wait now- you are surrounded by vehicles that have screeching alarms every time an alien is near. You are covered in lightbulbs which are not at all hard to see lit up even in the daylight, and you're in Moscow, a city filled with streetlights and billboards and neon signs, which are often on during the day anyway, and very visible. The creatures themselves behave exactly the same in the daytime and the night. Why would you hinder yourself traveling only at night? And this would be a minor issue if there wasn't a plot point later that hinges on them reaching a certain destination by a certain time and they pointedly waste valuable hours waiting until nightfall to get there.
2) (a few more spoilers in this one)
After finally getting to their destination, a submarine situated in the water of a nearby river, there is an explosion that causes their boat to capsize and everyone flies into the water. They swim to the surface and head for their destination, which is only about 200 feet away, but then Emile Hirsche realizes the main girl is gone. I assumed she drowned, but for some reason Emile's character thinks she's swam to shore far, far away from their goal and hidden out somewhere. Nevermind that they've been in the water for minutes at the most, giving her no time to get away without anyone noticing, but why would she head any direction besides the submarine anyway? But seconds later a flair is sent up from quite a ways from their location and after some ridiculous speeches by Emile (that don't really make any sense when you actually listen to them) they all take off to find her, adding another twenty minutes to the movie and probably bumping it up to the minimum amount of time to qualify for feature length.
Also, the aliens were cool until we got to see what they actually looked like. Then they were just disappointing, average aliens. The abstract spheres of light where much more impressive than their true forms, and it was a let down to see them, despite their interesting mode of transportation. Maybe I'm just tired of CGI alien takeover situations, but a more abstract antagonist would have been way neater and fresher than what they went with.
In closing: The Darkest Hour would make a good kid's movie. I don't remember how much cursing is in it, though they did star out the word "motherfucker" in the subtitles near the beginning, but otherwise it is not very entertaining to anyone who has seen many movies at all. It is almost entirely bloodless, no gore, not scary, the characters never hit any emotional depths, and there's a lot of pointless action and cool looking effects. Sounds like a good movie to transition kids 10-12 into more intense action and sci-fi movies without worrying about them being truly scared.
+points for so much actual Russian being spoken in Russia
+points for alien design (until the end)
-points (a lot of points) for being stupid for the sake of a longer movie and plot
Final verdict:
Wait until it's on DVD and rent it for family night.
4/10
4/10
