The Archive: Dark City (1998)

The Archive is going to be a regular feature here on Stacking The Deck, wherein I go through the numerous movies in my collection. These aren't new movies, so they're not listed under regular Reviews, but they're still all worth buying for a variety of different reasons. Some you may have heard of, some you may have not, but every movie I talk about in The Archive is worth buying, or at least watching repeatedly. 

Dark City is a loving, twisted homage to every noir trope in history, moody and bleak and oppressively creepy. Everything from the perpetual night to the ominous music, the familiar yet corrupt architecture, the tortured characters. Though not a horror movie, it certainly lays on the paranoia and the horrific imagery and concepts - hardly any gore, though, since as established, this is no low-brainpower slasher flick. You will need a brain to appreciate this movie, even though the opening narration holds massive spoilers thanks to some doofus at New Line; I strongly suggest you mute the narration or get the Director's Cut to fully appreciate the narrative that unfolds. I will avoid as many spoilers as possible in this review.