As the Autumnal nights start to roll in, I thought I'd get into the spirit by watching some suitably moody and dark films. One of the movies I decided to watch was one I vaguely remember from about 25 years ago called Dark City. I remember it being a noirish sci-fi with a cool premise but couldn't remember exactly what it was, only that The Crystal Maze's Richard O'Brien played a scary fedora and trench coat wearing bad guy in it.
Snuggled into my blankie, I watched the movie with my wife. She noped out after 10 minutes when the opening monologue explained the scenario of alien beings having taken over the art deco nourish world.
The first scene features an unconscious man, John Murdoch played by a typically solid Rufus Sewell, in a bathtub waking up to find a slain woman. He has no recollection who he is or how he has ended up in this squalid room with a dead body.
Suddenly, he receives an anonymous phone call telling him to escape as some people are coming to get him. What follows is an incredibly well-done cat and mouse tale as John is trying to find out the truth, the police are chasing him for a series of murders and the alien entities want to catch him for their own nefarious purposes. All this seems to link to a place called Shell Beach, a place everyone knows but no one seems to recall how to get there.
I thorough enjoyed the film as it is a pretty starry cast who are all pretty uniformly excellent; Kiefer Sutherland plays Dr Schreber very well, a creepy psychologist with an ulterior motive who had betrayed humanity to work for the aliens. Richard O'Brien plays an alien in a trench-coated human guise very well-unrelenting in his pursuit for his prey. However, Jennifer Connelly, who plays the wife of John Murdock, is a bit of a cypher though as she does not contribute much and the love story seems very artificial and tacked on. This is disappointing as Connelly is brilliant in everything she stars in and she seems underutilised.
The set design is immacute, all neo noir goth that reminds me of Tim Burton's Batman or Batman: The Animated Series and the hard-boiled film noirs of the 30s and 40s. The streets are rain slicked, the cars classic, it is constantly nighttime with fog and vented steam in the air that creates startling silhouettes and shadows.
The special effeacts are pretty effective as buildings change size and shape depending on the whims of the aliens - Paprika or Inception style. I watched the film over two nights as on the first night I was so tired and in a fugue state so, when the buildings start to move, I wasn't sure of it was in the film or I was dreaming.
The film is a semi-forgotton genre masterpiece and deserves much more recognition that it got upon release. It's a shame that there wasn't a longer lasting legacy for this film as I think it should be considered a classic.
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