I heard, before I saw this movie, that it was supposedly very much like Dark City. This alone made me actually see it, as Dark City is one of my favourite movies and, in my opinion, not known enough considering how many have borrowed from it aftwerwards.
The idea seemed interesting - One man dies over and over again, only to wake up in a new life. Screams DarkCity right there, but I will have to say that I don't think that's a bad thing.
The first 15 minutes, or so, had me at the edge of my seat, and yes, the first half of the movie is quite brilliant. But when our hero started to figure things out (with a little help from Michael Feast, who always is a joy to watch) the plot started to blur and I found myself playing "spot the movie" instead of paying too much attention to whether poor Ian would make it or not. Because Dario Piana has borrowed a lot. Not that I'm actually bothered by it. In fact, if he had managed to tie it all together in the end, it would have been a beautiful lovechild of Dark City and Jacob's Ladder (and other movies).
But sadly, in the end, the swan became a duckling again, ad it's a shame as this movie had so much potential to be something that I personally would have really enjoyed.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad movie, and there are some quite disturbing scenes. It simply feels like they had a lot of grand ideas that they, had no idea what to do with when the clock started to count down towards the end credits.
Even so, The Deaths of Ian Stone is a good second movie from Piara and I'm excited to see what he'll come up with in the future.
