Why haven’t people heard about Dark City? It came out a full year before The Matrix and dealt with a lot of the same altered state of reality questions. Hell, The Matrix even reused some of Dark City’s sets. Dark City was a huge inspiration to filmmakers and we can easily see its influence on subsequent movies. I’ll tell you why you have probably never seen this fantastic movie: Titanic. That’s right, Titanic. Dark City had the misfortune of coming out on the very same weekend as Titanic. And as we all know, Titanic dominated that opening weekend, went on to dominate for weeks, and then went on to become one of the highest grossing movies of all time. It should be noted that Dark City held its own with a strong opening and a very solid following weekend. But there was no escaping the dominating shadow of Titanic in the summer of 1998. Dark City went on to make okay profits both in the US and overseas. Still, by the end of the year, it ranked only 105th overall. That’s a crying shame because it’s a fantastically freaky movie. I can’t help getting passionate about pushing a movie that is so good and which so few have heard about, let alone watched. I got so riled up that I came within a hair’s breadth of rating it a ten. And nine is a pretty damn high rating. It’s high enough that you should move this to the top of your freaky-mind-bending-movie must-see list. I’m serious. Go add it right now; it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten a moment longer.
