Into the Light ALEX PROYAS’ DARK CITY TWO DECADES ON

Fedora-wearing detectives ripped from the pages of Raymond Chandler. Supernatural wraiths clad in black overcoats, their existential experiments splintering a city shrouded in shadows. And, at the core of it all, a dark love story. European auteurs Luis Buñuel and Andrei Tarkovsky – whose unsettling imagery, suggests Alex Proyas, served as inspiration for his Dark City (1998) – would certainly be pleased.

With the tragedy of Brandon Lee’s accidental death on the set of Proyas’ The Crow (1994) still but a recent memory, this twisted, genre-redefining tale was certainly a tough sell. But, twenty years on, Dark City has built a reputation among a horde of cult fans as a fascinatingly elusive, strange noir puzzle. Enveloped in skin-crawling, bile-green hues, the film is a whirligig of transmutable buildings – miniatures designed by Patrick Tatopoulos, but shot as though enormous and oppressive in scope – creating an omnipresent sense of