The Darkest Hour is a 2011 science fiction action film[5] directed by Chris Gorak from a screenplay by Jon Spaihts and produced by Timur Bekmambetov.

The film stars Emile Hirsch, Max Minghella, Olivia Thirlby, Rachael Taylor, and Joel Kinnaman as a group of people caught in an alien invasion.

With most of their food gone, the group leaves the club and finds the city full of scorched cars and cinders, but empty of people.

Vika and Sergei translate the radio message, which says that a nuclear submarine is waiting in the Moscow River to take survivors to safety, but will leave soon.

The submarine crew, after expressing their doubts about the rescue, assist by building another microwave gun with stronger batteries.

During the battle, Sean discovers the creatures' weakness when he throws a piece of the wounded alien he collected to another one, killing it.

Sean and Natalie, the only survivors of the original group, nearly share a kiss until Vika scoffs and breaks the romantic tension in a light-hearted moment.

Filming was temporarily suspended three weeks later due to the 2010 Russian wildfires affecting the city and its vicinity with their smog.

The website's consensus reads: "Devoid of believable characters or convincing visual effects, this may be The Darkest Hour for the careers of all involved.

"[9] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 18 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".

[10] The Hollywood Reporter criticized the film for having a "flatlining screenplay and the absence of even a single compelling character",[11] and The New York Times wrote that it has "a depressing failure of imagination".

[12] Writing for Slant Magazine, Budd Wilkins called it "a dimwitted 3D sci-fi travesty" and wrote, "Indifferently structured, Jon Spaihts's lame-brained script knows no narrative contrivance it doesn't love and, what's worse, blows its expositional load in the first 10 minutes, bringing together a quintet of cardboard cutout leads.

"[13] Joe Leydon of Variety called it a "modestly inventive and involving variation on a standard-issue sci-fi doomsday scenario".