The Desperate Hour is a different kind of trapped-in-a-box thriller
The setup of The Desperate Hour, a taut, almost real-time thriller starring Naomi Watts, poses an awkward dilemma for the filmmakers. It’s accessible, mass-market entertainment with a premise hinging on an extremely divisive issue: school shootings, and therefore gun control. Should they tackle that issue head on, and risk alienating a substantial chunk of the audience? Or should they soft-pedal it and hope that empathy for their characters and the inherent drama of the tale can change minds on the sly?
The team behind The Desperate Hour — veteran Australian director Philip Noyce (Patriot Games) and screenwriter Chris Sparling (Buried) — take the second option. They strip the story down to its barest essentials until it’s just a mother, alone with her phone and her rising sense of panic. Like last year’s The Guilty, this is effectively a one-hander, with Watts playing off a series of voices in her earbuds.
Amy Carr (Watts) is a grieving widow with a daughter in elementary school and a teenage son. One morning, she takes a personal day, packs her daughter off on the school bus, and tries to rouse her depressed son Noah from his bed. While she’s on a run in the remote woods near their hometown, her phone rings off the hook: her daughter’s school, a friend organizing a moms’ night out, the auto repair shop, her mother who’s flying in that day. Even when she sets her phone to “do not disturb,” an angry buzz cuts through: an emergency alert from the local police department. It’s the call every parent dreads. There’s an “ongoing incident,” and the town’s schools are on lockdown.
Much of the 81 minutes of small-scale action that follows is just about Amy’s mental and physical ordeal as she responds to the news and tries to
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