Darkest Hour 2011, not so bad as ridiculous invasion movies go, so don't read if you like same. We start with our young smartarse buddies landing in Moscow after a gratuitous lightning scare on the plane. We see McDonalds in Moscow and etc. Our heroes are immediately ripped off by a big corporation, of their invention, whatever it is... Loud disco tunes play as our heroines appear, they will meet the guys, who wisecrack while synthpop blares, and we get further irritating character development at a party until, at 14 min. the lights go out, and phones, and the sky is all swirly and everyone walks out saying ooh ah, all mystified. Pretty light-creatures some down and they split, then go foosh and sit there flickering. A cop walks out and touches one with his nightstick and he explodes into shards of black glass or something and now everyone screams and runs away. The orangeish light-swirl aliens absorb bullets no problem, and we switch to their vision, where people look like orange-lit swirl people. A few more people explode into black glass, a guy throws a booze bottle which burns but does it stop these orange swirly aliens? You know it doesn't, so everyone runs or explodes until our 4 MCs end up in a closet listening to the screaming.
They wait for 4 days and then, when they haven't heard any sounds for 27 hours... they go out and Moscow is empty, lots wreckage, no bodies, all conveniently exploded or whatever. A solitary old woman bricking up her window chases them off saying they will bring ghosts. Lots great deserted Moscow landmark footage. They get maps from a cop car, a dog runs past... it senses something, barks, explodes. Any real dog would be smart enough to run or hide, but not Rover. Now big blatty sound FX let us know the light-aliens are near. The orange ET spots them, but they crawl under the car and it doesn't find them despite all the electronics in the cop car go off. So the trick is... hide, I guess. The aliens see people as orange light, but now our group find a crashed jetliner which probably would have blown up,.. but they go on. They figure out that the mostly-invisible ETs can be seen better at night as they light electronic stuff up, and our heros now carry lightbulbs as warning devices. They get to the deserted embassy, find invasion messages from around the world, and a radio with a message repeating in what looks like a bird cage, but the ETs see electricity so they turn it off pronto. They look out over the city, everything is being absorbed or collapsing as ETs eat electricity and other conductive substances, but idiot-buddy has wandered out with a machine-gun onto the streets and as he's the only one speaks Russian, he has to be saved but no, he almost gets everyone killed, then he explodes.
They see a guy in a lit apartment window... the ETs aren't attacking him, so we get there and it's old Prof. electrician character, plus young blonde and orange cat, in a Faraday cage room. Hence, the 'lethal wave energy' ETs can't see them. The radio tells them a submarine in the river is leaving in the morning. They have to cross the city. Our Prof. has built a microwave projector gun, no less, but when the ETs burst into the room he only gets one of them before he explodes as does one of the girls.
Now 5 Russian soldiers appear with machine guns, flamethrower, rocket launcher and a horse, and they manage to take down one of the light-aliens. Then they all head off down the Metro, but light tentacles appear and one of our guys explodes. The remaining 3 Americans and 3 Russians make it onto a boat. Then onto the Sub, where they hotrod the microwave gun, using atomic sub quality gear and batteries, then go out to save Natalie. The microwave gun jams, of course, till the last second but then it zaps an ET and we see tentacles and octo-face as it explodes. Now the team floods the parking lot from a water truck, and the H20 conducts the microwave gun blast, shorting out ETs as the soldiers pepper them with guns and rockets, wow, Nat and Sean in bus, it takes off by itself, he blasts the ET, the brakes are gone, you can guess what happens.
Sean and pals head for the USA, Russkies stay home, everyone else in the world to battle on, with microwave guns, happy ending.
