The Strangers are experimenting on humans by removing their memories and replacing them with new ones that were mixed up from the vats. The info-dumps are scattered throughout the film for the viewer to grab and absorb as quickly as possible. The sets are extraordinarily detailed, setting off trains of cultural and historical associations. The question of how we deal with the accumulated, real, but intangible traces of our own existence is explored. Nevertheless the film is visually stunning, seamlessly mixing architecture from a dozen eras with an expressionist aesthetic and chiaroscuro cinematography.
Special effects are near flawless and stylistically unified.
Fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld will swoon over one particular closing sequence. Despite my misgivings over the film's development of its ideas, I recommend it, because it is philosophical, intelligent and ambitious, a rarity in Hollywood SF, and because of a few sequences which have genuine emotional power. Bit 7 Details Dark City , by New Line Cinema, 1998. Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Jennifer Connelly, Kiefer Sutherland.