Dark City

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. (23/07/2010)

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. (13/10/2015)

And they say lightning doesn’t strike twice. If Proyas's The Crow was dark, depressing, interestingly stylized, and narratively "unusual", all this is doubly true for Dark City, a very bleak and unpleasant vision of a world dominated by bald aliens who are allergic to light, can bend physics to their advantage and have a motive that, even after much thought, doesn't seem illogical or nonsensical. Of course, we've seen the single hero destined to carry out a revolution and defeat an invincible foe a few times before, but when everything around is so tastefully polished, thoughtful and novel, a little cliché can never hurt. And Jones’s soundtrack is perfect for the genre :)) 85% (24/12/2013)

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. (19/02/2005)

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. (25/01/2006)