Dark City

The materialized nightmares of Alex Proyas, where hope remains in the form of the beautiful Jennifer in impenetrable darkness. From Dark City, the believable and yet perfectly and typically divided characters of the charismatic protagonist or excellently played doctor Sutherland emerge. And just when everything starts to take itself too seriously, a horde of aliens arrive, boldly settling the film back into a position of a more cheaply constructed sci-fi narrative. But who cares, when it can be so innocently irresistible. (01/25/2006)

The dark setting and black backgrounds create an original and depressing atmosphere. Alex Proyas literally revels in this, and it must be acknowledged that this is his style and he is a good director. Rufus Sewell is in an unusual role here, one of his few in B-movies. The film has a very peculiar atmosphere and top-level visual effects, and it does not lack originality and inventiveness, but the ending is not as intellectually or emotionally strong as I would have imagined based on the unfolding of the story. (02/19/2005)

Wow, that was a ride! Mix together Metropolis, P.K. Dick, Burton, Gilliam, the Coens, and maybe even The Matrix, add to that Proyas' ornate direction and Proyas' very, very bizarre script... And you get Dark City. It's a juicy treat for genre lovers, which I would probably recommend to Franz Kafka if he ever wants to come back from the grave to watch a movie. (07/23/2010)

Alex Proyas revels in the dark. He literally loves it. And he wants the viewer to love it too. This is not only the case with Dark City, but also with his other films. If there's a dawn breaking, it's more metaphorically, through enlightenment, change. This precursor to The Matrix offers another answer to what visions are presented to us and what a person can achieve. (10/13/2015)

If the Dark City was not consciously pointing out the proper noir atmosphere right from the beginning, I would almost say that the main character could have found the way to the beach on the Internet. While for us, travelling anywhere is nowadays a simple process, when with two clicks we can see not just the journey from the map’s position, but also the journey from the car driver’s position, in this film it formed the basis of the story. The film changed from noir crime film into a complete sci-fi in a split second. I thought that it is nice that in the nineties the American directors had balls to shoot similar movies. Nowadays, nobody would pay for it unless it had the stamp of Marvel or a remake. (04/04/2016)