Dark City is a 1998 tech noir film directed by Alex Proyas, and starring Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O'Brien, and Ian Richardson.

In the film, Sewell plays an amnesiac man who, finding himself suspected of murder, attempts to discover his true identity and clear his name while on the run from the police and a mysterious group known as the "Strangers".

[8][9][10][11] Concerned that audiences would not understand the film, New Line asked Proyas to add an explanatory voice-over to the introduction, and he complied.

When the clock strikes twelve, Murdoch witnesses everyone else fall asleep and the Strangers use tuning to physically rearrange the city's architecture.

Murdoch and Bumstead take Schreber and attempt to reach Shell Beach but instead end up at a poster for the town on a wall at the edge of the city.

Frustrated, Murdoch and Bumstead break through the wall, revealing outer space, just before some of the Strangers, including Mr. Hand, arrive with Emma as a hostage.

After learning from Schreber that Emma has been re-imprinted and cannot be restored, Murdoch employs his powers, amplified by the Strangers' machines, to create a Shell Beach within the habitat.

[17] When Proyas finished his preceding film, The Crow, in 1994, he approached production designer Patrick Tatopoulos to draw concepts for the world in which Dark City takes place.

The film's budget was $30–40 million, so the crew used inexpensive techniques to build the set, such as stretching canvas onto welded metal frames.

Tatopoulos said one day Proyas "called me and said he wanted something like an energy that kept re-powering itself, re-creating itself, re-shaping itself, sitting inside a dry piece of human shape".

[29] It features music from the original score by Trevor Jones, and versions of the songs "Sway" and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" performed by singer Anita Kelsey.

Special features on the DVD included two audio commentary tracks (one with film critic Roger Ebert, and one with director Alex Proyas, writers Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer, and production designer Patrick Tatopoulos), cast and crew biographies and filmographies, comparisons to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, set design drawings, and the theatrical trailer.

We don't just coolly observe the bizarre, ever-changing skyline; we plunge into the city's benighted depths, following the protagonist as he explores the secrets of this grim place where the sun never shines.

"[38] In the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack wrote that the film was "among the most memorable cinematic ventures in recent years", and "maybe there's nothing wrong with a movie that is simply sensational to look at."

"[39] In a mixed review, Walter Addiego of The San Francisco Examiner thought that "as a story, Dark City doesn't amount to much", its "complicated plot" containing important themes that were "no more than window dressing", but that "what counts here is the show, the creation of a strange world by a filmmaker who clearly knows science fiction and fantasy, past and present, and wants to share his love for it.

This guy wears bad luck like the grimy trenchcoats of his protagonists, only his zipper's stuck and he can't seem to shake the damn thing off."

"[41] Left equally disappointed was John Anderson of the Los Angeles Times, who said of the directing that "If you had to guess, you might say that Proyas came out of the world of comic art himself, rather than music videos and advertising.

Dark City is constructed like panels in a Batman book, each picture striving for maximum dread", and that Proyas was "trying simultaneously to create a pure thriller and sci-fi nightmare along with his tongue-in-cheek critique of artifice.

"[42] Author TCh of Time Out felt that the development of the Murdoch character was "surprisingly engrossing" and thought the "art direction is always striking, and unlike most contemporary sci-fi, the movie does risk a cerebral approach, tapping a vein of postmodern paranoia.

"[45] He was quick to admit that "The special effects and set designs are dazzling", but ultimately felt "Proyas makes a crucial error in treating the subject even more seriously than The Crow, and the dialogue (co-written by Proyas and The Crow: City of Angels scriptwriter David S. Goyer) is unintentionally funny at times and often just plain dumb.

"[45] What they have done is taken a few second-hand ideas from noir and speculative fiction and mixed them in occasionally striking ways, even if, in the end, the result isn't all that much fun.

Andrea Basora of Newsweek, stated that director Proyas flooded the screen with "cinematic and literary references ranging from Murnau and Lang to Kafka and Orwell, creating a unique yet utterly convincing world".

[47] Similarly, David Sterritt wrote in The Christian Science Monitor that "The story is dark and often violent, but it's told with a remarkable sense of visual energy and imagination.

"[49] Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that the "plot that Dark City builds on John's predicament is a confused affair" and that the film's premise is "unsettling enough to make you wonder if it could actually derail a seriously drug-addled mind.

"[50] Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique found the production design and the cinematography overwhelming, but he considered the narrative engagement of Sewell's amnesiac character to be ultimately successful, writing: "As the story progresses, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, and we gradually realize that the film is not a murky muddle of visuals propping up a weak story.

It has a World War II-era dreariness reminiscent of Edward Hopper's works, as well as details from different eras and architectures, from the 1940s to the 1960s, that are changed by the Strangers "buildings collapse as others emerge and battle with one another at the end".

[76] Dark City has also drawn comparisons to the anime films Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984)[77][78] and Megazone 23 (1985),[79] as well as the 1993 video game Gadget Invention, Travel, & Adventure.

[80] When Christopher Nolan first started thinking about writing the script for Inception, he was influenced by "that era of movies where you had The Matrix, you had Dark City, you had The Thirteenth Floor and, to a certain extent, you had Memento, too.

[81] Mask of the Evil Apparition, a short film written and directed by Proyas, set in the Dark City cinematic universe, was released in 2021.

During a Q&A session after a screening of the short film, Proyas revealed he was in the early stages of developing a Dark City series.