Dark City
(1998)
Silliness ranking: Yes and no. It’s stylized, so some things are part of this style, and I wouldn’t change them at all. It’s kind of like those old films like Metropolis and Nosferatu.
Beautiful: Yes.
Fun/entertainment factor: Yes. High.
Feeling at end of movie: Good, I guess.
Random thought at end of movie: Dr. Schreber should have carried a simple spray bottle with him at all times. That way, he wouldn’t need to sit all day in the pool and could just spritz away the annoying Strangers.
Overall recommend: Yes.
The story begins when the protagonist, John Murdoch, wakes up in a hotel room bathtub, having no idea who or where he is, or how he got there. There’s a dead girl in the room, but he has no recollection of killing her. He flees the hotel and soon finds himself pursued by the police and a group of cadaverous-looking weirdos called the Strangers. (These guys remind me of Nosferatu.) There’s also a psychiatrist named Dr. Schreber who seems to know a lot about the Strangers and why John’s important to them.
I had a Matrix premonition that toward the end of the film John Murdoch would be battling hordes of Strangers with a rusty metal pipe, but fortunately, that didn’t happen. (All it took was one well-aimed knife, sent with unbelievable precision solely by mind-power.) Actually, in a way, I like Dark City more than The Matrix.
Rating: Four out of five stars.