Philip Noyce’s thriller film titled The Desperate Hour came out in 2021, immediately becoming Naomi Watts‘ yet another incredible performance. Both critics and fans seemed to have enjoyed the movie, so if you are curious about whether you should watch it or not, then make sure to read till the end to find out more about its plot.
The movie has a relatively small cast starring Naomi Watts in the lead role of Amy, followed by Colton Gobbo as Noah, Andrew Chown as Robert Ellis, David Reale as CJ, Josh Bowman, Edie Mirman as Amy’s mother, Paul Pape, Ellen Dubin, Zehra Fazal, and lastly, Alex Paxton-Beesley.
The movie, at the time of its release, got to premiere at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival, where Naomi Watts ended up taking home immense praise for her acting in the movie, though the film overall felt not up to the mark of a standard thriller.
The movie follows the story of a recently widowed woman called Amy, who seems to be doing her best to keep herself together and cope with the loss of her husband. She is shown living with her young son in a small town, trying to move on with their lives, but tragedy soon hits, throwing Amy’s life off the course once again.
She finds during one of her jogging sessions that her entire town has been put into chaos because of a school mass shooting that took place at the same school her son visits. While the movie is supposed to be a thriller, it also has very relevant themes underlying the plot, especially the commentary on school shootings, which seems to be going out of hand in the present times.
The movie is more about how Naomi Watts ends up being a heroic mother who is hell-bent on saving her son, not wanting to lose yet another part of herself. But somehow, the plot ends up feeling more lost and chaotic, with the makers losing grip on both the thriller genre of the film and its subtle social commentary.
The Desperate Hour Ending Explained
The movie introduces us to Amy, a recently widowed mother of two kids, Emily, the younger one, and Noah, the distant son she struggles to connect with. We are told at the start of the film that very soon it will be Peter, Amy’s dead husband’s one-year death anniversary, and as the day comes close, Amy grows more uncomfortable and anxious.
We see her in utter despair as she struggles to go to sleep, and when she does, the sleep is always plagued with nightmares that wake her up just as quickly as she went asleep. Just two days before the death anniversary, Amy has yet another nightmare, which triggers her to get her stuff together and try to be better.
She decides to take one day off her work so that she can spend time with herself, trying to reconnect with her old life, if possible. So she takes her younger one, Emily, to her school bus, which takes her to her school, followed by her finding Noah still in bed, not ready for school.
We find that Noah has been refusing to go to school for the past few days and has spent his days stuck in bed, complaining that he does not feel all that good. But Amy refuses to buy into his story, thinking it to be her teenage son’s tactics to get out of school.
So, as she prepares to go on a run in the woods, she pushes her son to be ready for school. Amy had wanted peace and calm while on the run in the woods, but instead, her phone ended up getting blasted by a different person every minute. She continues to get calls and texts from her family, friends, and work people.
The Hostage Situation
After spending some time running and taking calls that constantly interrupted the quiet she so desperately wanted, Amy looked up properly for the first time, only to notice a bunch of police cars not very far from her. Some minutes later, she gets a notification on her phone telling her that all local schools around town have been shut because of a possible school shooter on the loose.
Her immediate instinct is to get into contact with her daughter, Emily’s homeroom teacher, Fischer, who lets her know that her daughter is safe and so is her school. After confirming the safety of Emily, Amy next worries about her distant son, Noah, who she remembered left for school after her constant nagging.
She fails to get into contact with her son, with her calls being constantly being pushed toward his voicemail. She gets the notice that people in Lakewood High School may have been taken hostage by the shooter. She makes a few more calls to finally be able to piece together all that is happening in town.
A school shooter who had taken the life of a girl previously had taken students of Lakewood High hostage. The police were unable to identify the shooter, and Noah’s truck was in the school parking lot, which meant that he listened to his mother and went to school.
A 911 operator told her to go to the community center, where all the parents had gathered in hopes of getting their children back. She decides to run toward the school to get to her son and, while doing so, also calls one of her neighbors to confirm Noah’s absence from their house.
Who’s The Shooter?
As Amy struggles to get to the school from her location, which seems like the middle of nowhere, she gets told by CJ, the mechanic, that her son’s truck is being searched by the police and Noah is being suspected to be the school shooter.
Amy gets a call from a detective as well, asking her about her son’s well-being and mental condition. Anything that could push him to take a school hostage. The call does not give her any information about her son’s safety, and Amy is left worried sick, continuously punching Noah’s number to get in contact with him.
She leaves him a voice message telling him about the suspicions of the police and asking him to stop indulging in the situation if he is the school shooter after all. But as it turns out, Noah is not the shooter as Amy finds herself with a mobile number that her boss managed to get his hands on, telling her that it belonged to the school shooter.
Obviously, Amy calls the shooter, but the call is brief, with the shooter not saying much. The police and detectives on site get a hold of this information and shout at Amy for ruining their investigation. Finally, after much stress, Noah and Amy manage to get into contact with each other, but once again, the call is short, with Noah sounding like a mess and under stress.
The Real Shooter
We find that the shooter was, after all, somebody who had worked with the school previously, though this person remains a shadow figure for the most part. We don’t know much about the shooter or Noah as characters, which makes it difficult for us to connect with them.
Amy finally reaches the school premises and is asked by the police to try and get in contact with the shooter once more so that they can break into the room where the hostages are while she distracts him. Barely a minute into the call, Amy ends up losing the shooter’s interest, and we hear a gunshot sound.
The Ending Explained
Amy is thoroughly shocked and finds herself unable to do anything, but before she completely breaks down thinking she lost yet another loved one, she spots her son, Noah, stepping out of the school, shaken to the core but alive.
They reunite and embrace each other, with Amy desperate to confirm her son’s well-being. The movie ends with the mother-son duo going back home and Amy’s mother confirming that she had Emily safe as well. Before the credits roll, we spot Noah filming himself for a video that he posts on social media, condemning school shootings and urging the people to fight back against such injustice.
The plot of the movie is simple and almost predictable. We are shown Noah, a character we don’t know much about except for the fact that he is a teenager who has just lost his father and that he is not coping with the situation all that well.
He seems depressed and distressed and has rifles in his house. All of this makes us doubt Noah, but that will be too predictable and easy. The shooter ended up being another character we don’t know much about, and we are never told the reasons behind his actions, which leaves us feeling lost and confused.
The movie seems to be made half-heartedly, with the makers not knowing what direction to go in. The shooting manages to bring the mother and son together in some twisted way, but that, too, doesn’t feel very satisfying. The Desperate Hour fails to rise up to the mark of an actually interesting thriller and social commentary.
