In big, broad, unsubtle strokes, writer Chris Sparling and veteran director Philip Noyce sketch out the background of the central character, Amy Carr (Naomi Watts), in The Desperate Hour, a spare, sparse suspense-thriller shot during the pandemic utilizing minimal resources. A recently widowed, single mother of two children, Noah ( Colton Gobbo), a sullen, withdrawn teen, and Emily (Sierra Maltby), a seemingly well-adjusted preteen, Amy is struggling with the loss of her husband a year earlier, making her, if not an inattentive mother, then a slightly distant one, isolated by her grief even as she participates in the rituals and rhythms of everyday life. Amy can’t be described as a bad mother, of course, just...
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- 2/25/2022
- Screen Anarchy
This review of “The Desperate Hour” (formerly known as “Lakewood”) was first published on Sept. 12, 2021 after the film’s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.
A mom’s morning jog becomes a gimmick running in place in “The Desperate Hour,” a crisis scenario striving for issue-driven importance that should have paid more attention to its dull suspense mechanics, slapdash style, and implausibility.
The estimable Naomi Watts is always in fighting shape for the deep feelings of a peril picture, as her all-in turns in “Funny Games,” “The Impossible” and “The Wolf Hour” attest — hell, throw in “King Kong” too — but as Amy Carr, a widow in the woods and desperate to get to a son in danger, it’s the actress who’s stuck and unable to escape the confines of a cheap trap that only gets more tedious as it goes along.
Her captors are filmmakers who should know...
A mom’s morning jog becomes a gimmick running in place in “The Desperate Hour,” a crisis scenario striving for issue-driven importance that should have paid more attention to its dull suspense mechanics, slapdash style, and implausibility.
The estimable Naomi Watts is always in fighting shape for the deep feelings of a peril picture, as her all-in turns in “Funny Games,” “The Impossible” and “The Wolf Hour” attest — hell, throw in “King Kong” too — but as Amy Carr, a widow in the woods and desperate to get to a son in danger, it’s the actress who’s stuck and unable to escape the confines of a cheap trap that only gets more tedious as it goes along.
Her captors are filmmakers who should know...
- 2/25/2022
- by Robert Abele
- The Wrap
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