The Quiet Hour

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 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.

Visually, this low budget drama is nicely done with atmospheric location and lighting.

The performances aren't bad. The main problem is that the actors really had very little to work with, and I feel for them.

There is no real plot beyond a very shallow rehash of the besieged-by-nutters theme. The SF/alien aspect is completely superfluous and is in no way required by the travesty that masquerades as a storyline. The dialogue is dreadful, with thin chunks of cliché exposition and old-hat speculations about aliens who the budget will not allow us to see.

As is so often the case, the first reviews of this movie are implausibly glowing... and similar. Draw your own conclusions.

Perfect title since most of the movie is just boring...

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.