The Darkest Dawn (2016) Reviews

• Humanity is inherently evil?

  drm26422018-07-01

  This movie is bad and pretty boring. Most of the time the characters are yelling at one another while one of them finds the time to film everything with classic shaky cam. This isn't the main problem with the movie though. The film maker seems to be going off of the Walking Dead premise that mankind is inherently evil and is just waiting for an apocalypse to start turning on one another. Literally every time the group comes across another group of people the other group wants to kill/harm/rape them. I get that there are bad people out there and maybe there would be some people behaving this way, but realistically if aliens are invading people would band together against this common enemy. I would think even people that normally hate one another would set aside their differences in the name of trying to survive as a species. The fact that none of the characters bring this up is unrealistic. The movie is an hour and fifteen minutes long. It feels a lot longer...

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• A tired format these days

  plangdon-482212016-11-11

  The first ten seconds into the film my heart sank. Yep there it is...... the shaky home camera format that they have flogged to death over the past decade. It is lazy film making really isn't it? If your framing, your camera work, your setting or your lighting is poor and unpolished you can just pass it off as intentional. The lead part is played by a young lady who clearly has attended elocution lessons, probably privately educated and is quite formulaic. It's a low budget affair and the acting is a bit 'cardboard' at times. Some of the character's response to the world being overtaken by aliens is more akin to being stuck in a holiday resort after they had missed their flights. Quite why they all dressed like tramps and were filthy only a few days after the invasion escaped me. Part of the way into it they begin to get undecided as to whether to stick with the home cam format or go for the more conventional film footage approach. Switching between them started to irritate me. Glad I didn't pay to go to the cinema to watch this.

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• Worse acting than Hungerford

  ambientlinestudio2018-07-15

  Absolutely some of the worst acting ever. It's just too distracting from what could have been a somewhat enjoyable movie. The dialog is simple-minded and completely unrealistic, bordline art school cheesiness.

• Should I rate this down because it is a found footage movie?

  siderite2016-11-03

  Worth mentioning that this is not Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn, nor is it related to Wing Commander in any way. From the get go you know that it will be a found footage film, with the young beautiful daughter (nose ring and everything) getting a new video camera from her lovely and loving and supporting family. You know things will turn to crap from then on... Luckily, the action begins after only five minutes, with some spooky alien ships coming to invade by sending robots that take over human hosts. So something that combines alien invasion movies with zombies. At this point you wonder if it is even worth continuing to watch something that is clearly so referential as to be almost already watched. Well, I will tell you. By minute 24 they've managed to kill all adults and remain in a group of outspoken teenagers. They also find some guns. After moving and talking to the camera, meeting the alien ship about once every half an hour, having the camera switch in and out of focus and having weird electronic errors whenever the action should have been good, having people shout at each other and shooting at each other... the movie ends. So no, it's not worth watching. It was an almost decent effort, but it failed on amateurish editing, unlikable characters and too much monkeying around. Plus, there was no plot.

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• Brit B grade alien apocalypse flick

  s32761692016-11-05

  The Darkest Dawn is a Brit, B grade, alien apocalypse flick. Its a not too shabby effort. The acting is alright and some of the special effects, whilst, very obviously CGI, actually do fit the overall, "end of the world", feel of the film quite well. What does show are the clear budgetary limitations. Rather "ho hum" sets and weapons that look, for the most part, like badly dated, army surplus. The scripting for this film could have been better too. The character narrative, is, at times, a bit cheesy. The loving family thing is over cooked but mercifully, does not last, as the aliens quickly arrive on the scene. All in all, not a bad effort from a film with B credentials. On that basis a six out of ten from me.

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