A work of considerable imagination from I, Robot director Alex Proyas. Parts of this sci-fantasy are just amazing: towers rise, fall and re-shape before your eyes as aliens, who have taken over the titular city, mix and re-mix the place and its inhabitants as they stop time each midnight and search for the key to human existence and an answer to the imminent extinction of their own race. Outwardly, things are normal, except, when pressed, people will admit to not remembering daylight, among other lapses. A serial killer is on the loose and it may be Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), a victim of alien experiments by their earthly co-conspirator, Dr Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland). Murdoch escapes but, since the aliens can store inside him such 'memories' as they choose, how can he tell what's real? Clearly influenced by Nosferatu, Metropolis and Kafka, director Alex Proyas, who made the much inferior (but still stylish) The Crow, finds his talent nearing full flower here, amid looming walls, moving buildings, a staggering underground hall of soulless aliens and a terrifying secret revealed at the end. Chilling - and darkened throughout by helplessness and doom - it matches the best sci-fi literature of recent years with a consistency of which few films have proved capable.

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