Taglines: Darkness falls soon.
Dark City movie storyline. John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in a hotel bathtub, suffering from amnesia. He receives a phone call from Dr. Daniel Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), who urges him to flee the hotel to evade a group of men who are after him. During the phone talk, Murdoch discovers the corpse of a brutalized, ritualistically murdered woman, along with a bloody knife. He flees the scene, just as the group of men (known as the Strangers) show up to investigate the room.
Eventually, Murdoch learns his own name, and finds he has a wife named Emma (Jennifer Connelly). He is also sought by police inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) as a suspect in a series of murders committed around the city, though he cannot remember killing anybody. While being pursued by the Strangers, Murdoch discovers that he has mind powers—which the Strangers also possess, and refer to as “tuning”—and he manages to use these powers to escape from them.
Murdoch explores the city, where nobody realizes that it is always nighttime. At midnight, he watches as everyone except himself falls asleep as the Strangers stop time and physically rearrange the city as well as changing people’s identities and memories. Murdoch learns that he comes from a coastal town called Shell Beach, a town familiar to everyone, though nobody knows how to leave the city to travel there, and all of his attempts to do so are unsuccessful for varying reasons. Meanwhile, the Strangers inject one of their men, Mr. Hand (Richard O’Brien), with memories intended for Murdoch in an attempt to predict his movements and track him down.
Murdoch is eventually caught by inspector Bumstead, who acknowledges he is innocent, and by then has his own misgivings about the nature of the city. They confront Dr. Schreber, who explains that the Strangers are endangered extraterrestrial parasites who use corpses as their hosts. Having a hive mind, the Strangers have been experimenting with humans to analyze their individuality in the hopes that some insight might be revealed that would help their race survive.
Dark City is a 1998 American-Australian neo-noir science fiction film directed by Alex Proyas. The screenplay was written by Proyas, Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer. The film stars Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, and William Hurt. Sewell plays John Murdoch, an amnesiac man who finds himself suspected of murder. Murdoch attempts to discover his true identity and clear his name while on the run from the police and a mysterious group known only as the “Strangers”.
The majority of the film was shot at Fox Studios Australia. It was jointly produced by New Line Cinema and Mystery Clock Cinema. New Line Cinema distributed the theatrical release. The film premiered in the United States on February 27, 1998. The film was nominated for Hugo and Saturn Awards.
For the theatrical release, the studio was concerned that the audience would not understand the film and asked Proyas to add an explanatory voice-over narration to the introduction. A director’s cut was released in 2008, restoring and preserving Proyas’s original artistic vision for the film. Some critics have noted its similarities and possible influence on the Matrix series, which came out a year later.
Dark City (1998)
Directed by: Alex Proyas
Starring: Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Melissa George, Richard O’Brien, Ian Richardson, William Hurt, Colin Friels, Ritchie Singer
Screenplay by: Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, David S. Goyer
Production Design by: George Liddle, Patrick Tatopoulos
Cinematography by: Dariusz Wolski
Film Editing by: Dov Hoenig
Costume Design by: Liz Keogh
Art Direction by: Richard Hobbs, Michelle McGahey
Music by: Trevor Jones
MPAA Rating: R for violent images and some sexuality.
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
Release Date: February 27, 1998
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