SummaryLiu Xing is a Chinese science student pursuing a PhD in the US in the early 1990s. Driven by ambition yet unable to navigate academic politics, Liu Xing is inexorably pushed to the margins of American life until he loses his way. Liu Xing arrives at a big Western university with plans to study the origins of the universe. In the beginning, everyt... Read More
Directed By:Shi-Zheng Chen
Written By:Billy Shebar, Shi-Zheng Chen
Dark Matter
Metascore
Mixed or Average
49
User score
Mixed or Average
6.0
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
49
25% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
63% Mixed
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
13% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
75
The film does a fine job of displaying the contrasts between these tense, formalized Chinese students and the faux populist American academics.
70
First-time director Chen Shi-Zheng shows great sensitivity to the pressure and isolation felt by Chinese brains at American universities, and the relationship between Liu and Quinn provides a rare look at the intellectual serfdom of graduate study.
60
This is a great film, to a point. Unfortunately the ending doesn't deliver, making the entire feature an exercise is wasted potential. But maybe that's the point.
50
An unsatisfying drama that premiered at Sundance '07 and was supposedly delayed because of the Virginia Tech shootings.
42
Liu Ye is too inexpressive for his role's demands, and the movie doesn't build to his downfall: It just zaps itself there.
40
Dark Matter has neither the technical command of an art-house film nor the manufactured intensity of a grade-B thriller, yet it's also too cheap and dirty to feel like a Hollywood-scale drama.
25
If only it weren't based on a true story. It might have been a good movie.
User score
Mixed or Average
6.0
25% Positive
1 Rating
1 Rating
75% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Jan 8, 2020
4
(Mauro Lanari)
Inspired by the true story of Gang Lu and by the 1991 University of Iowa shooting, it's so interchangeable with the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting that production had to push back the release over a year. Sociological and cultural psychopathology of US late adolescence, it has not much to say about the narcissistic clash between professor and student, about interethnic conflict and even less about cosmology: dark matter is a simple metaphor of the negative side of human nature, recycled a decade later by Ayache-Vidal in "Les Grands Esprits". Debut of an opera director, it drags the theatrical ballast of "Monkey King" and "Madama Butterfly" (both explicitly shown in the film), adding cinematic incompetence to a melodramatic cut. Streep in "Desperate Housewife" version with a knack for sinology.
Sep 26, 2015
4
What the hell was that ending ? I don't get why you would end the movie that way? When this was a real situation? Then again that proffesor was a **** but did he deserve that ending? No
Production Company:
- Saltmill
- Janet Yang Productions
- Myriad Pictures
Release Date:Apr 11, 2008
Duration:1 h 28 m
Rating:R
Awards
Sundance Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
