I recently watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I was really taken aback by how it uses something as awful as a school shooting to try and make its violence seem okay. It’s a stark contrast to films like The Desperate Hour – which shows that the most impactful stories about tragedies aren't about showing violence but about focusing on people involved. While The Desperate Hour doesn’t quite reach the level of films like Elephant or Polytechnique, and it stumbles with its ending, it still manages to be a moving experience. Naomi Watts really deserves praise for her performance; she carries an incredible amount of weight both physically and emotionally. She's in every scene, and most of what we hear from her comes through a cellphone. It’s not easy carrying an entire movie on your shoulders, especially when you have to run with the prop! As a mother whose child is at a school experiencing an active shooter situation, the role could easily become repetitive, but maintaining that focus without overdoing it and resorting to melodrama is difficult; her maternal instincts need to drive everything she does, while also avoiding any extreme reactions that would push the audience away. Watts handles this tricky balance remarkably well, making her character consistently understandable and approachable. However, the third act feels forced, falling apart in a way that's similar to Halle Berry’s The Call. Roger Moore of The Seattle Times once said that film lost its way when Berry stopped using the phone and started investigating on her own, becoming something more ordinary and less engaging; here, Watts doesn’t hang up the phone, but it’s who she contacts that shifts the movie into a generic thriller instead of a serious examination of the topic.

Source on TMDB