Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

A great visionary achievement, a film so original and exciting, it stirred my imagination like "Metropolis" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Washington Post by Stephen Hunter

If you don't fall in love with it, you've probably never fallen in love with a movie, and never will.

Time by Richard Corliss

It is as cool and distant as the planet the Strangers come from. But, Lord, is Dark City a wonder to see. [2 March 1998]

Newsweek

Proyas floods the screen with cinematic and literary references ranging from Murnau and Lang to Kafka and Orwell, creating a unique yet utterly convincing world.

Newsweek by Andrea C. Basora

Proyas floods the screen with cinematic and literary references ranging from Murnau and Lang to Kafka and Orwell, creating a unique yet utterly convincing world.

New Times (L.A.) by Andy Klein

Full of provocative concepts, but, like most films that attack such metaphysical concerns head-on, things have become a tad too jumbled by the end to be altogether satisfying. It's a problem built into the subject matter...This all said, Dark City is immensely entertaining, as well as visually dazzling.

Washington Post by Rita Kempley

Obliged to go from lost soul to demigod, Sewell's performance is as fascinating as Proyas's mystical vision.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Dark City has as stunning a visual texture as that of any movie that I've seen...Visually, this film isn't just impressive, it's a tour de force.

USA Today

Fascinating, visionary filmmaking. With its amber-tinged palette and its distinctively dystopian view of life, it may be the most unique-looking film we've seen in ages...[but] defies logic and makes frightening and unexpected leaps.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Proyas' movie lacks a truly rich or compelling story -- although the city secret is certainly a rich and compelling idea. All too often, Dark City seems a great production design in search of a movie, an ultimate modern film noir pastiche, in which the images are so strong they overpower the drama. [27 Feb 1998]

USA Today by Marshall Fine

Fascinating, visionary filmmaking. With its amber-tinged palette and its distinctively dystopian view of life, it may be the most unique-looking film we've seen in ages...[but] defies logic and makes frightening and unexpected leaps.

Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt

The story is dark and often violent, but it's told with a remarkable sense of visual energy and imagination.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

So relentlessly trippy in a fun-house sort of way that it could very easily inspire a daredevil cult of moviegoers who go back again and again to experience its mind-bending twists and turns. Although its story doesn't add up when you analyze it afterward, the movie does take you on a visually arresting ride that offers many unsettling surprises right up to a sentimental sunburst of an ending that has a paranoid undertone.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey

An almost really good movie...risks leaving the viewer feeling like one of the bewildered automatons that move through the plots.

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

It's all about the amazing look, cobbled together from an astonishingly evocative range of sources: "Nosferatu" and "Mad Love," "Brazil" and "Metropolis," a haunted mosaic of bits and pieces of movie memories.

L.A. Weekly by Manohla Dargis

[Proyas] hasn't yet learned how to enliven his characters as fully as his sets. Part of this is structural (somnolence is built into the script), but the greater fault lies with Proyas' direction of his performers, most of whom deliver their lines in a strangulated whisper.

San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack

Dark City grabs your eyeballs and squeezes.