Ian West’s review published on Letterboxd:
Ambitious neo noir sci-fi jam from Proyas is incredibly hard for someone like me to dislike. It may be bullshit but it’s my kind of bullshit, and I remember folks used to love this movie a lot more before The Matrix came out... then that monolith dropped and usurped this (similar) movie just kinda sank into the limbo abyss... which is a damn shame if you ask me because I think Dark City has much to offer.
Maybe it’s because I (still) love The Crow and Proyas (Gods of Eygpt fan right here) but I always felt like this (and him) have gotten the wrong end of the stick for far too long. Like The Crow, there’s some truly awesome production design and cinematography at play here—leaning hard on that dark (and highly influential) atmos that folks like Christopher Nolan (amongst others) have been slathering their movies in for years now (but, if you as me, never as dark and never as good). Sure... this might get too ambitious at times and some of the script/ideas fizzles out but I can’t help admire this whacky bullshit because it never not feels sincere in whatever whackadoo bullshit its aiming for.
I know it’s super cool and hip to hate this movie now but I love that like... this is the kind of movie that opens with detective William Hurt (who’s totally in a different movie) trying to solve a spiral Jigsaw Murder spree... and half an hour later a bunch of pinless pinhead cenobites who call themselves the strangers (and use the force lol) show up while Kiefer Sutherland limps around Caligari hallways like Peter Lorre.
So yeah there’s no way I could ever not like this movie.