A Children's Movie

Rating: Null/10 (3 June 2002)

"Dark City." What a burden. There were so many errors in this movie. To write a complete review would be tremendous. Inexperienced acting, a B-movie plot, extremely unrealistic CGI, shallow characters you don't even want to care about. Set in a world of fantasy mixed with reality, where the fantasy is obviously fantasy, and reality obviously does not fit. It would waste my time trying to describe everything, because there's too much of it. Too much is wrong.
If you like "Dark City," or think you might like it, stop reading immediately. You may not like the things I have to say.
It wasn't my expectation to be thrilled by this movie. Only four movies have ever been able to do that to me. It wasn't my expectation to be scared. It is probably impossible to truly scare me with a movie. So I was hoping for some trace of a plot, acting, or some special effects, to make up the difference. I found none of the above. In the end I was shocked, to find that my fatalistic preconceptions were far too mild, compared with how sickeningly laughable this movie really was.
This is a slow film, with no action, no events to note. The story is sparse and bafflingly predictable, wandering nowhere, with nothing exciting or unusual. There isn't even any sex or violence to redeem the movie; though neither sex or violence would have helped, since they have been overused for years, and are therefore beyond cliche.
It's outside of my comprehension, how such a childish movie could be R-rated. This is especially profound coming from me. I've seen only a handful of modern movies, don't play blood-and-guts video games, take no hallucinogens, and cry easily. I should be extremely inexperienced, ignorant, shocked at everything. So then, what's wrong with Dark City? Why did it have no effect on me? Why was I laughing, especially when people got hurt? But maybe I'm genetically desensitized.
But I wanted to give the film the benefit of the doubt, so I forced myself to watch it three times. It didn't grow on me. It was so thin and unstimulating. It begged to be hated. In the end, I was glad to turn the movie off.