Great film, great cast. For some reason the "strangers" always reminded me of Hellraiser's Cenobites. To be honest, I highly doubt The Matrix was inspired by Dark City in any way - for one, the release dates differ only by one year. It's impossible to write, shoot and release a big studio production movie in a span of one year. Furthermore, I have always found it interesting how rebels who were connected to Matrix used almost identical method for that purpose to one in William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. I could definitely see inspirations coming from there. Dark City itself seems inspired by Kafka a lot.