I’m not entirely sure what the full context was when I saw this movie. I have a clear memory of watching it in a classroom, but I don’t think it was for the Science and Ethics class. I’m not really sure what scientific or ethical discussion could be had from this story. I think it was a “it’s the last week of classes and nobody’s getting any work done” kind of presentation. The main thing I remember is how deeply disturbed I was by it.

A man wakes up in a hotel bathroom with no memory of who his is or where he is. The phone rings, and the man on the other side, Dr. Schreber, tells him that people will be coming for him and he needs to get out. The man in the hotel room finds a murdered woman and a bloody knife in the bedroom and runs. This is John Murdoch, or that’s what all the evidence says, anyway. When the trenchcoated Strangers catch up to Murdoch, he discovers he has the ability to bend reality with his mind, which the Strangers recognize as “Tuning”. Inspector Bumstead gets assigned to the case of the serial killer who kills and decorates prostitutes when the previous detective on the case has a mental breakdown, and now they have enough clues to identify a suspect: John Murdoch, who left his wife Emma three weeks ago when he learned she was having an affair and must have snapped. But the night he woke with no memories, John went up to a call girl’s room and found he didn’t have it in him to do anything. At midnight every night, everyone except John falls asleep and the city rearranges itself according to the Strangers’ design, while Dr. Schreber injects new memories into those they have selected to place in different lives as part of their experiment. John has dim memories of growing up in a place outside the city called Shell Beach, which everyone has heard of and nobody can quite explain how to get to. With new plans in mind for John, the Strangers plan to track him down by injecting one of their own with the memories he was supposed to receive.

This movie has the least light I have ever seen in a movie. People are complaining now about how it’s impossible to see anything in modern movies and TV, but this might be even darker than what we get now. That’s definitely meant to echo how the sun never rises in the city, but as all of the frustrated audiences are saying now, there’s a limit. I definitely was hindered by watching in a brightly lit room, but I don’t know how much better it would have been in a darkened theater.

The Strangers’ experiment is supposed to be about understanding what changing memories does to the human soul, but I don’t think the point was made successfully. Aside from people slowly starting to notice that the world doesn’t make sense, I don’t really see very strong demonstrations of people staying the same in different lives. We only really see two people on either side of an imprinting, and one is basically the same guy but in a very similar setting, and the other one falls asleep telling one side of a story about a work dispute, and wakes up telling the other side of it. There’s altogether some very interesting ideas presented, but the mystery builds so slowly that I’m not sure much is really done with it. Even the climactic final battle is kind of a silly obligation. John gets slipped a syringe full of everything he needs to know (an actually impressive sequence, but not a heroic moment for John) and proceeds to have the goofiest special effects fight where he and the leader of the Strangers glare intensely at each other for a couple of minutes while the environment around them falls apart.

John is so much of an everyman type that I completely forgot about him in the years since I first saw this movie. Schreber, the creepy doctor who works for the Strangers under duress so you’re never fully sure if you can trust him, was incredibly memorable. I realized a little later that that was Keifer Sutherland, best known as the lead on 24, which is an incredibly different role. I’m never going to forget how disturbing Schreber was played, and I don’t necessarily see a reason for that take.

I really thought I’d missed something from the plot the first time around, but it really is just the puzzle box. By the time we understand everything, the movie is over. You’re left with the striking, if dim, visuals and some questions about identity that I think there was an attempt to make a statement on. This is a popcorn movie trying to philosophize, and it’s disappointing it isn’t all it wants to be.