The Quiet Hour

As often, reviews and ratings on IMDb are completely wrong, as I found The Quiet Hour vastly underrated.

In gloom and at slow pace, accompanied by a very rich and touching score by Carlos José Alvarez, following Sarah and Tom through the hardships of survival is an intimate journey.

By avoiding an excess of action-driven plot points, as you would expect from your average alien invasion film, this one comes across far more evocative and tense.

It reminded me a bit of Testament by Lynne Littman, but The Quiet Hour is the better cinematic experience of the two, and I guess somewhat more positive. (Not that any of them could really be called cheerful to the slightest.)

The actors are good, the filming is good and the production is good. If this was a meal I'd describe it as good vegetarian. There's nothing really original, there are other movies with a very similar theme out there. It's power is its youth, our heroes, honestly portrayed when faced with loss and other far more aggressive stranger adults, whom happen to outnumber them. The youngest is immature and has a disability, all wrong steps stem from this innocence. From that point of view this is well crafted, and an engaging experience. The plot has several moments of true creativity and forethought. It ends well, which was satisfying. For me, being much older than the cast, I tended to see many missed opportunities. Sometimes the camera captured nature or sky with real flare, but there could have been much more of this. The Quiet Hour could have been peppered with symbolic natural image, on both small and grand scale. I liked the location, but it wasn't invested with enough for me. Then there is the aliens. I'm assuming a truly tight budget, because a bit more of that creativity could have brought this movie into a more contemporary horror. We enjoy a new age of computer graphics, and we should delight in possibilities. Overall though, as the movie wasn't long, I'm happy to recommend it.

I can't understand the 4.7 rating. This movie may not stand out in any particular way but it doesn't have any of the hallmarks of a bad movie. The acting is good, it looks good, it has a simple story but one that is compelling and a good atmosphere. I enjoyed watching it.

Sarah and her blind brother Tom are trying to survive after an alien invasion has ended life as they knew it and wiped out most of the Earth's population. (She's described as "feisty" officially but not that's not the word I would have used. She's just trying to get by, like everyone else.) When a stranger, Jude, pursued by a violent gang, disturbs Sarah and Tom's home, they have to decide whether or not to trust him and figure out how to stop the threat of the gang.

It doesn't have sci-fi action, it's a "quiet" film with a background sci-fi setting but still some interesting alien images and ideas.

I really should learn to check reviews before watching these things. I could have gone out to the shed, got some paint, daubed it on a wall and sat down to watch that dry instead.

Described as "sci-fi" there was very little to merit that description apart from a few brief CGI shots of alien spaceships hanging from the clouds like haemorroids. At least that was all I saw of the sci-fi element in this film before I realised that its lack of pace was casting an air of gloom over me and switched off.

The plot is slow. I mean, glacial. It's also, how can I put this.........dull.

I tried really hard but gave up after 35 minutes.

The Quiet Hour (2014): A British SF film (although it was shot in County Tipperary in Ireland) about an alien invasion, really more Post Apocalypse because this is the end of the world as we know it. We never see the aliens, just their Mother ships hanging the sky and the scout ships they send out to zap humans. Apparently they have come to extract minerals from the Earth's crust (we se vast open cast mines). Civilisation has fallen, only isolated groups of people survive. The narrative begins at an isolated farmhouse, 19 year old Sarah and her younger brother Tom are the only surviving members of their family, Tom was blinded in the attack which killed her mother. Their farmhouse comes under siege from marauders and they to decide whether to trust a stranger, A bleak take with more than one unreliable narrator. There is a sparse backstory available, we pick up information from conversations rather than infodumps. We see the savagery which has resulted from the crumbling of society, cannibalism isn't just alluded to - we also see evidence of it if not the actual act. Good acting. A lot more could have been achieved with a bigger budget, Still, well worth watching. Written and Directed by Stéphanie Joalland. On Netflix. 6.5/10.