Hours ** One of Paul Walker's final performances is also one of his best, however this mystery drama is a mixed bag.

Set in 2005 as Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans - Paul Walker plays Nolan Hayes, a father to a premature new-born who finds out that his wife tragically died during the conception. As the storms thrash against the outside of the hospital and patients and doctors evacuate the building, Hayes must stay behind and look after his incubated baby until help arrives.

The film proceeds to set up an array of narrative devices. First of all, a power-cut causes the hospital generator to kick-start, but Walker's character realises that the incubator relies on a faulty battery which he repeatedly has to wind-up by hand to keep the ventilator working. This, surprisingly, racks up a fair amount of tension as the film consistently keeps our minds hooked to the fate of the baby as the battery life threatens to count down to zero. At its best, Hours is a sparse depiction of human endurance against adversity that nods towards films like Terminal(2004) and 127 Hours(2010)  with its self-contained claustrophobic setting - however, despite the its ambitions, it never quite reaches the dramatic impact of these films. Walker does well in what is essentially a one man show, giving a particularly low key and restrained performance - but about halfway through, the film begins to feel overstretched as its central idea wears thin. To avoid having Walker just sitting in a room talking to a baby or himself, the narrative has to start introducing more and more unbelievable plot contrivances which climax in a very misjudged scene of violence. This horror sensibility could be largely explained by the presence of the film’s writer and director Eric Heisserer, who thus far has writing credits on Final Destination 5 (2011) and the redundant remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010).

Hours has a dark, shadowy, almost paranormal visual aesthetic which often works in its favour to accentuate the looming tempestuous presence of the hurricane as well as the metaphorical storms that the central character is experiencing. Although the film goes about its subject matter with the best of intentions, its brooding stillness too quickly becomes inert and even, at times, a little tedious as the emotional core is ultimately mired by the flagrant weaknesses in the scriptwriting.