Blu-ray Review: ‘The Darkest Hour’ Deserves None of Your Time

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CHICAGO – “The Darkest Hour,” recently released on Blu-ray and DVD, may seem like a fun sci-fi action option for movie night. It is not. There’s nothing fun about this horrifically made film, easily one of the worst of 2011. It’s stunningly bad, almost as if it was made by college students. Otherwise talented actors get sucked into awful performances (both male leads have never given less genuine performances), the special effects are horrible, and there’s never even the slightest flicker of anything worth giving a damn about. When this flick was shuffled off unceremoniously without critics screenings on Christmas, I suspected it was bad (it only made $21 million domestically although, startlingly, accumulated $65 million worldwide). It was much worse than my expectations.

Blu-ray Rating: 0.5/5.0

There’s a theory that you can learn as much from a bad movie as a good one. Like rainy days make us appreciate the sunny ones, bad movies show us why the good ones work by comparison. “The Darkest Hour” will make most of your favorite sci-fi films even better than you remembered. It’s an absolute train wreck of which I have nothing nice to say. It only avoids legendary 0-star status because they didn’t screw up the HD transfer. That’s about it. Keep this one away from the light.

The Darkest Hour
Photo credit: Summit

Synopsis:
A Sci-fi thriller featuring mind-blowing special effects from the minds of visionary filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) and director Chris Gorak (Art Director, Fight Club, Minority Report),The Darkest Hour is the story of five young people who find themselves stranded in Moscow, fighting to survive in the wake of a devastating alien attack.

Special Features:
o The Darkest Hour: Survivors
o The Darkest Hour: Visualizing an Invasion
o Deleted And Extended Scenes
o Audio Commentary

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com