The Darkest Hour (2011)

There is a certain purity to a film that wants nothing from us beyond ninety minutes of our attention and perhaps a small concession on the matter of believable character motivation. The Darkest Hour, released in 2011, concerns five young people in Moscow who survive an alien invasion that arrives by draining the world's electricity. The aliens are invisible. They hunt by sensing the body's electrical charge. Glass stops them. A microwave gun makes them visible. That is the whole of the intellectual architecture, and the film has the good sense not to pretend otherwise. It is a lean, cheerfully stupid survival thriller, and it preaches precisely nothing.

The cast is anchored by American leads, with Russian performers filling the supporting roles as locals, a decision that reflects the Moscow setting instead of any coordinated effort at representation. Natalie and Anne are handed action beats and survival agency, though the film frames none of this as commentary. A business partner's betrayal over a stolen software application opens the proceedings, which is setup for a grudge, not an argument about capital. On every other axis of modern social consciousness, the film is a void. No characters outside the standard configurations. No engagement with race or climate or the body or the mind. The alien invasion is powered by our grid, not our emissions.

Critics at the time were unkind, and their unkindness took an instructive shape. Reviewers complained about the flatlining screenplay and the absence of ideas, not the presence of too many. That is the telling detail. A film can be accused of many sins in this era, but failing to lecture its audience is not among them. The Darkest Hour simply wants to show us a bus, a microwave gun, and a submarine, and then go home. We should let it.