Ok I know this is going to sound stupid, but seriously it’s dark in here. Someone please turn on the lights. :/
The Darkest Hour is a movie that came and went. It opened up on Christmas day for some odd reason so clearly no one actually expected the movie to do well at the box office. That doesn’t mean that the film itself is bad though at least in theory.
Now that I’ve had the chance to check out the film I can officially speaking say that the movie ain’t that bad, but it ain’t that good. It’s one of those flicks that starts off decent, but slowly gets worse over time. Part of the reason why it gets worse is because it feels stupid. The one saving grace is that this film is shot in Russia and for obvious reasons looks different than typical dooms day movies. That being said while you do get good locations, you also do get some bad Russian acting.
There are four special features: Survivors, Visualizing an Invasion, deleted and extended scenes, and audio commentary. Survivors is a side story that features different locations from around the world and human survivors fighting against the alien forces. You do learn more about the aliens themselves and see more fighting against them. Visualizing an Invasion covers a lot of the ground work for the production of The Darkest Hour and how it came to be.
The Survivors and Visualizing an Invasion are well made extras so considering them with the film itself I’d still say rent The Darkest Hour. The film has interesting elements, but at the end of the day it has a bland feeling to it.