"You wouldn't believe what I've been through tonight."

One night in SoHo, a chance encounter with a mysterious woman leads a mild-mannered Manhattan word processor named Paul Hackett into a bizarre odyssey that grows increasingly surreal with every attempt to make his way home. As the night wears on, a series of increasingly improbable misfortunes leaves him stranded in a city that seems determined not to let him escape.

Martin Scorsese's After Hours transforms New York after dark into a surreal labyrinth where every street corner conceals another absurdity. Shot largely on location in SoHo and the surrounding neighborhoods, the film captures a downtown Manhattan in transition, its cobblestone streets and industrial lofts becoming an uncanny landscape of paranoia and chance encounters. Scorsese plays the city as both playground and trap, where Paul’s increasingly desperate attempts to return home only carry him deeper into the night. Few films capture the particular anxiety of being lost in New York quite as vividly, and among the many New York films Scorsese has made, After Hours remains one of his most underappreciated.