One way to decompress from the holidays might be to watch a bunch of people who look like models get obliterated by a scary laser-like alien creature. If that sounds like your thing, it looks like The Darkest Hour is going to fit the bill.

Speaking of alien movies, my biggest gripe about Cloverfield that I didn’t really care about any of the characters. If there were anybody in that movie that I could get behind at all, it was Lizzy Caplan’s character, and that was probably because she didn’t seem all that thrilled with her company either. Maybe they were just a shade or two too glamorous looking and exceptionally successful for their ages to be all that relatable as characters. And when you’re thrown into a story about an alien invasion, it’s good to have at least one character that you can latch on to throughout the ordeal. It's hard to look at the cast of The Darkest Hour and not wonder if this one will follow a similar pattern as Cloverfield.

Starring Emile Hirsch and Joel Kinnaman, the Summit film hits theaters on Christmas Day and follows a group of young people trying not to get zapped to death by some (mostly) unseen alien threat. The trailer below, which was originally posted by iTunes doesn’t seem to offer all that much more than what we saw in the trailer that arrived online back in August. In fact, this one clocks in at about a minute, which is substantially shorter than the two minutes and twenty-eight second trailer released previously.



The special effects stand out as being the biggest draw for a movie as we see people bursting into dust similarly to the way the tripods zapped people in War of the Worlds. The Darkest Hour aliens appear to be in the market for energy, which apparently also involves destroying buildings and people in the process. Running, hiding and fighting back may be in the cards if these characters want to make it out of the movie alive. Whether or not the story holds up to some of the cool visuals shown in the trailer above remains to be seen. At the very least, it looks line fine, disastrous fun for those looking for a big alien invasion movie this Christmas.

More on The Darkest Hour can be found in our Blend Film Database.