Aloha, Mr. Hand......Dark City (1998)

Dark City is a 1998 film written, directed and produced by Alex Proyas (The Crow, I, Robot and Knowing) that has a substantial cult following and was hailed as The best film of 98’ by Roger Ebert, whom I admire and respect. 

So, dare I use the acronym, WTF? 

I dare. Like Tom Hanks in Big, I don’t get it.

Dark City opens with John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), passed out in an old hotel bathtub, with no recollection where or who he is. During a phone call from his psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Schreber (KieferSutherland) claiming to want to help him, he realizes there is a dead woman in the room. He flees and the party starts. 

The dark city in which this movie takes place is an obvious rip off of Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis (1927). “The Strangers”, led by Mr. Hand are group of soul sucking albino’s from another planet that reconstruct human’s memories and expand the dark city at midnight every night in an attempt to understand the human soul in order to save their race.

Like any Sci-Fi flick there are a set of contrived rules in order to make everything tick and a single person, John Murdoch, who posses the ability to over come these rules. Now, I don’t really have a problem with Sci-Fi films, nor dark/noir films. I do, however, have a problem with bad acting and terrible editing. Sutherland is a bumbling nerd and Dark City holds the title for movie with the shortest amount of screen time before a cut (did I say that right?) There is a cut every 1.8 seconds, on average. Yikes. This movie tries to deal with the complexities of the human mind, who we are, what makes us who we are, etc. etc. In any case, I think it sailed past its mark.

As a film student I had the pleasure of watching this in class with 40 other film students. When 20 + students are laughing hysterically during the entire climax sequence, you know you have something, errrr, special on your hands. While others seem to LOVE this movie, I found it rather boring and pretty unoriginal in plot with nothing too exciting to keep it afloat.

My Vote: If you are into poorly drawn film-noir/sci-fi/horror flicks, this is right up your ally. If you’re like me you’ll want to go re-watch a much better and very similar blockbuster from the following year, The Matrix.