Dark City
Directed by Alex Proyas. US. 1998. R. 111 min.
- Fri, Jan 7, 10:00 pm
Alex Proyas’s noisy psychedelic movie nightmare, Dark City, is so relentlessly trippy in a fun-house sort of way that it could very easily inspire a daredevil cult of moviegoers who go back again and again to experience its mind-bending twists and turns. Although its story doesn’t add up when you analyze it afterward, the movie does take you on a visually arresting ride that offers many unsettling surprises right up to a sentimental sunburst of an ending that has a paranoid undertone. … The movie’s premise — that what we call reality might simply be a fantasy imposed by an omniscient mad scientist — is unsettling enough to make you wonder if it could actually derail a seriously drug-addled mind. The world it envisions is a stylized, claustrophobic, fantasy of Depression-era New York City existing in perpetual night.” (Stephen Holden, The NY Times).
Director’s Cut screened on blu-ray.