The Dark Hour

Here’s a decent little Spanish sci fi film that was released with a minimum of fuss back in 2006.  Shame, really, as it’s a really rather good, a well made, low budget mix of the  zombie and post-apocalypse genres, something like a cross between Day of the Dead and I Am Legend, not to mention the forgotten seventies Spanish films Refuge of Fear and The People Who Own the Dark.

Following a calamitous war, a small group of survivors cling to life in a huge underground shelter.  A mixture of soldiers, scientists and kids, they’re gradually being decimated by the hordes of infectious, zombie-like ‘strangers’  who are slowly infiltrating their hideout.  Furthermore, the place is periodically attacked by ephemeral and yet deadly ‘invisibles’, ghosts that attack and kill anyone who isn’t safely locked up during ‘the cold hour’.  Neither of which, as it turns out, prove to be quite as deadly as the survivors themselves who, in customary style, manage to c*ck eveything up for themselves through their in-fighting and general idiocy.

Considering that this must have been made with severely limited resources, it’s really quite an acheivement.  Although derivative, it throws in some new ideas of it’s own and scores strongly on characterisation, which is much better than usual for this kind of thing.  It also benefits from being told through the eyes of one of the children, Omar Muñoz, giving it a slightly different feel to the standard horror / sci fi film.

There’s a neat promotional website still up (as of writing), and the UK dvd release is perfectly acceptable (although a making of documentary would have been nice).  Director Elio Quiroga made a film called Fotos back in 96, and his new film, No Do, was released in Spain at the end of last year (it’s being touted internationally at the moment under the title The Beckoning).  There’s an interview with him here.