Sleep now.

You wake up. You're soaking in the tub, in the green-tiled bathroom of a dark, grimy apartment. A hanging lamp is swinging back and forth, casting weird shadows on totally unfamiliar surroundings. You wait for the disorientation to lift, for memory to kick in and remind you where you are... who you are. But you can't remember anything.

You feel a sudden rush of panic and leap from the bath. Examining your face in a dirty mirror, you see a thin trickle of blood running down your forehead. What happened to you? You find some clothes and quickly throw them on. Stumbling clumsily into the bedroom, you knock a fishbowl to the floor. It shatters. Impulsively, you scoop up the flopping goldfish and drop it into the bathtub.

You find a small suitcase and rummage through it in a desperate search for something, anything, that will cut through the fog of confusion. You find a shirt — too large to be yours — a cop's badge, and a postcard from a place called Shell Beach, which instantly triggers a memory-flash of yourself as a child, on a pier, bathed in bright sunlight.

At that moment, the phone rings, loudly and harshly. You answer, and a manic, staccato voice comes over the receiver:
“You are confused, aren't you? Frightened? That's all right, I can help you.”
“Who is this?!”
“I am a doctor. Now you must listen to me. You have lost your memory. There was an experiment, something went wrong. Your memory was erased. Do you understand me?”
“No, I don't understand! What the hell is going on here?!”
“Just listen! There are people coming for you, even as we speak. You must not let them find you. You must leave now!”

Then you see the body. Dropping the phone, you walk in horror around the bed to see a half-naked woman lying on the floor, with sinister, disturbing spirals carved into her. You recoil, backing into a table and knocking a bloodied knife to the floor. You totally freak.

You flee the apartment in pure panic, stumbling into the dark hallway just as the elevator arrives on your floor with a menacing chime. The doors roll open, and three strange, evil men in dark hats and trenchcoats emerge, heading straight for you...

These are the first couple minutes of the movie Dark City — watching it again the other night reminded me of just how great the movie's opening is. In terms of dropping the hero into the action without any explanation to either the audience or the hero, only Hitchcock's North By Northwest does it better.

The movie manages to hold this initial tension for about 45 minutes, and then it starts to slip as the story's veneer is stripped away. The finale, though, is really good, and so reminiscent of The Matrix that it's important to remind yourself that this film came out a full year before the Wachowskis' opus.

Like many, I'm not a fan of Dark City's opening narration, spoken prior to the above scenes — it unnecessarily gives away far too much of the story. The movie's opening is infinitely more powerful if taken without that preface. (Special edition DVD? Director's cut? Please?)

Dark City remains one of only two perfect fusions of science fiction and film noir (the other being Blade Runner — another film weakened by unneeded narration). And while The Matrix had a very similar and better-developed premise (perhaps overdeveloped), it didn't deliver the nightmare quality of Dark City — the “Strangers” of Dark City are much creepier than the “Agents” of The Matrix.

The movie's nightmarish atmosphere and haunting imagery are (sorry) an oneirologist's dream (ouch), lifted directly from our most common nightmares: not knowing who or where we are; being accused of a crime we didn't commit; running from an unstoppable menace we don't understand; being forgotten by our loved ones; drowning; needles; suffocation; falling. And of course, lots of clocks — what's a nightmare without a dash of Dali?

And what do the sinister “Strangers” do when they catch you? They wave their hand hypnotically in front of your face, and purr-hiss an irresistible command: “Sleeeeep. Sleeeeep now.”

More dreams. Just what you need.