Summit Entertainment is bucking the trend and launching the 3D sci-fi thriller The Darkest Hour in theaters on Christmas Day. The alien invasion film finds a group of survivors struggling to exist in a world in which aliens have taken over and are wiping humans off the face of the planet. Starring Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Rachael Taylor, Joel Kinnaman, and Max Minghella, The Darkest Hour marks director Chris Gorak's first foray into 3D feature films.

In our exclusive interview during the 2011 Comic Con in San Diego, Gorak explained what he hopes audiences will get out of the use of 3D to tell this story. "Just like Avatar brought you into Pandora, we're trying to bring you into a city that I've never been to until I made this movie and that I think 90% of our audience has ever been to. It's not on a lot of people's vacation lists," explained Gorak.

Exclusive Chris Gorak The Darkest Hour Interview

It appears from the trailer as though we don't see these alien invaders.

Chris Gorak: "The aliens, yeah, at first that's one of the greatest challenges and we learn that they're made of wave energy - electrical wave energy - so when they pass a light bulb, they'll illuminate the light bulb or a streetlight or a headlight on a car. So what our characters learn is that the wave energy, because of this quality of setting off electrical devices, it's actually safer to travel at night than day. So it flips the genre on its head where night is safer and day is scarier.

So, it's kind of what attracted me to the project, but also we learn that this invisible quality is just an invisible shield and that there's something behind that. Eventually, they figure out how to get back there and pull back the curtain."

If the film's premise is that the night is better for the characters than the daytime and this is a 3D film, and 3D glasses are inherently darker, how do you compensate for that?

Chris Gorak: "Well, because the daylight is scarier than night, we set the movie in the daytime so it's scarier. Even though our characters don't want to be in the daylight - there's a reason for them to out at night - so we set a lot of it during the day. So we do some bright daylight scenes and the 3D looks fantastic."

Do you worry while you're shooting that because of the 3D and the glasses, audiences will be seeing a darker screen?

Chris Gorak: "Yeah, and we take a lot of time in post-production actually testing how dark it will be with these glasses, with those glasses, in this theater and that theater, and in this kind of theater. We do all these different tests and say, 'Okay, that's too dark. We have to make this lighter.' We do all these tests to compensate for that."

Does having to adjust and compensate for 3D affect your vision for the finished film?

Chris Gorak: "Yeah, I think so, but not in a negative way. It's just the tools we decided to use. We decided to shoot 3D and that's a very positive thing; there are a lot of pros to 3D filmmaking, but then you have other challenges. Where as if we shot on 2D with film, there would be different challenges. There's always technical difficulties."

And in addition to technical difficulties, you had fire difficulties too. You actually continued working with smoke visible in the scenes?

Chris Gorak: "Yes, and that became a problem in 3D. Moscow was getting smoked out, for about two weeks the smoke kept coming and it was real thick. By the time we were wearing gas masks they evacuated us. Even though the smoke was apocalyptic we had to take it out for two reasons. It started hiding all of our great locations - we were shooting in Moscow when we got smoked out. Two, when you shoot with two cameras the smoke becomes a problem in 3D because one camera records it at one depth and another one from a different depth, so if you actually saw that it would hurt your brain."

Were you tempted when the smoke first appeared to pull the cast and crew out then and not have any of this going on while you were filming?

Chris Gorak: "Yeah, we didn't know how much smoke was a problem and how thick it had to be to become a problem. But it just got really thick, really fast. But, luckily, we came back when it was over."

Was it tough to pick up where you left off when you finally returned to shooting?

Chris Gorak: "When you go on hiatus when you're making a movie, you're nervous that the studio might shut it down or something. But they were very happy with the dailies and what they were seeing, and they were very excited about the story and the people we had in it. They sent us back three weeks later and just picked up where we left off."

Was it tough to get the actors back in the right mindset?

Chris Gorak: "Everyone was so excited about the project, we were having such a good time making the movie that it was almost like a reunion when we came back. We got going right away, full speed."

How friendly was location for you as a filmmaker?

Chris Gorak: "You know, I think Moscow is a big city and it comes with all the problems and challenges included in that. The Russian crews and the Russian people we worked with were very friendly. Working in that large urban, European environment was very challenging."

Was it so challenging that you wouldn't do it again, given the option?

Chris Gorak: "No, I would do it again. I would for sure do it again, having conquered it once."

What was the appeal of doing an alien movie?

Chris Gorak: "I'm a huge science fiction fan. Some of my favorite movies are science fiction and I feel as a rite of passage you've got to tackle the alien invasion movie. It's mandatory for a filmmaker."

Do you think there will ever be audience fatigue when it comes to alien films?

Chris Gorak: "You know, you worry about that as a filmmaker but then you realize, 'Well, it's not fatigue if you can make it fresh,' and that's what we set out to do. One movie I looked at for this was 28 Days Later. It was a zombie movie, but it was the freshest thing to come around in generations. So how do you make an alien invasion movie as fresh as something like 28 Days Later?"

How do you do that?

Chris Gorak: [Laughing] "You will see."

How does The Darkest Hour differ from other alien invasion films?

Chris Gorak: "The unique cast of characters and the unique location, Moscow, and the unique danger of the aliens. Those three things I think are off-center. We're a genre movie and we're in the famous science fiction realm on a beaten path, but we're just off-center and away from the norm."

You're also a writer. Did you do any work on the script?

Chris Gorak: "I did. I came in at a certain point and Jon Spaihts wrote the draft, and then at that point I did some rewriting and did some work with all the writers to bring the script to where it was for the production. You know, bringing the story down to budget, bring the story to a tauter journey with our characters - and staying with our characters' perspectives."

I saw comic book designs that show the invasion in other cities. Do you have plans to sign on for sequels and go to these other cities?

Chris Gorak: "We will let the audience determine that. I hope so."
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Do you want to revisit this alien invasion story?

Chris Gorak: "Of course."

Why is Emile Hirsch that right guy to star in The Darkest Hour?

Chris Gorak: "I love Emile. I saw Into the Wild and I love that performance, love that movie. He carried it. And, really, with all the actors that we've got we wanted actors who felt real and who haven't saved the day in a science fiction movie yet. We wanted real people in real peril, and just to make the danger feel real and scary. We just wanted actors who could do that and make you feel like, 'I know that guy. I can relate to that guy.' As opposed to, nothing against him, but the Will Smith version where it's like, 'Oh, Will Smith's going to save the day.'"

How difficult was the process of getting the special effects right in this film?

Chris Gorak: "It was a long journey with Stefan Fangmeier, our visual effects supervisor. It involved a lot of different visual effects and we were halfway around the world, so a lot of it was long-distance via Skype and the internet and traveling there, back and forth. There's so many little details about the mythology that we wanted to get right. We wanted the mythology to be congruent to the whole story, so you had one company working on this aspect and another company working on this aspect and we had to bring them together until they marry into one mythology. It was a lot of challenges."

Did the effects turn out as you envisioned?

Chris Gorak: "You know, in a good way, it never does because what happens is you have something in your mind and inevitably in the collaboration process somehow it becomes better than you imagined. It's always a lot of fun."

There's no real basis in technology because, of course, these aliens don't exist. But what did you have to do in the storytelling to satisfy sci-fi fans/scientist who might pick apart the technology?

Chris Gorak: "I know there is a couple places where the scientists are going to have a field day. But the good thing is that from our perspective, they are aliens and they have alien technology, something that's different from our energy. So, we have that to our advantage. But we tried to stick to the physics of our world, how this type of alien reacts to the physics of our world. Water will conduct their energy; metal will conduct their energy. They will turn on a lightbulb, just like our power will turn on a lightbulb. So it has that relationship of their reality and our reality, and we try and bring it together into a dangerous scenario."

I noticed on some of the storyboards displayed here, there's a cat as one of the characters and usually we think of the animal companion as a dog. Why a cat?

Chris Gorak: "The Russian scientist has a cat. And, I'm allergic to cats."

How did you handle that?

Chris Gorak: "Carefully. Stuffy nose, some allergy medicine."

Timur Bekmambetov was one of your producers. How did he help you out?

Chris Gorak: "Timur was great. He's a creative madman. He's a real creative force. It's more about reining him in sometimes because he'd be all over the place, and try to bring all his great ideas down to earth. Because he's a filmmaker he understands what I'm trying to accomplish and he was always offering help and support, and never trying to step in front of me at all. It was awesome. I'd work with him again in a heartbeat."

I saw comic book designs that show the invasion in other cities. Do you have plans to sign on for sequels and go to these other cities?

Chris Gorak: "We will let the audience determine that. I hope so."
?
Do you want to revisit this alien invasion story?

Chris Gorak: "Of course."