A lukewarm achievement

Rating: 4/10 (25 September 2010)

I saw this movie on the recommendation of other reviews here at IMDb. After looking through 5 pages of reviews, all of which were more or less glowing, I had pretty high expectations. While I found the film interesting at times, I was also disappointed.
Firstly, the good points: -For a slow film, the suspense was fairly well maintained. -The noir-cum-scifi style was generally well executed. -The acting was good (though never great. Nothing that blew me away.) -There were a few memorable shots.
These were somewhat overshadowed for me by a few things that really annoyed me about this film. For a $40 million budget, the main (unforgivable) problem was that it looked terrible. It feels like Buffy on a bad day. -90% of the shooting was awkward and about 50% looked positively unprofessional. For the first half of the film I found this incredibly distracting, by the second half I was sort of resigned to it. There was something about the quality of the film that reminded me of a late-night TV drama... Like it tried to be unpredictable with its cinematography but was in the end just clumsy and awkward mixed with a large number of obvious shots. -The special effects were used well in a couple of scenes, but largely left me thinking of old-school Doctor Who or Star Trek. Just a bit clunky and under-whelming. -The structure of the plot was bog-standard. The whole noir thing works fine, but they totally ignored any sort of relevant backstory. Spoiler: -I'm sure the ideas in the film seemed original before the Matrix came out. But the Matrix doesn't use inexplicable aliens. The fact that the Matrix's antagonists arise from the creations of humans makes the Matrix a lot more compelling. Dark City, on the other hand, uses a very dated idea. What, did they just abduct 1000 or so people and fly off? That's what it feels like. It feels boring and ridiculous.
In conclusion: The best thing I can say about this film is that it was weird. For some, that in itself is going to be enough that you really like it. However, the disjointed plot and shooting served more to alienate me from the action and ideas, which, while 'adequate', were nothing too stunning or original anyway. If you're a big scifi fan, you may as well rent it if you've nothing better to do. But don't bother buying it.