A Scanner Darkly Review

A Scanner Darkly

Based on the book by Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly stars Keanu Reeves as “fred” an undercover agent addicted to the drug “Substance D”. The drug messes you up bad enough that you start developing split personalities and incredible confusion. This is possible because the cops wear “scramble suits” that hide their identity. Turns out one of the roommates is a snitch and reports his friend “Bob” is a bigtime dealer. So, Fred/Bob is investigating his roommates and himself without quite realizing it. This intriguing plot is the reason I wanted to watch this film. Sadly this isn’t really the movie it could have been… instead it is something else.

One of the more notable and interesting aspects of this movie is the use of the rotoscoping technique. This technique is where the film is shot regularly then they animate the frames as in the example below… Basically it looks kinda like a cartoon.

I’m not sure why Richard Lanklater decided to do this, except maybe to get the audience in on the surealism of the drug induced state. But that is right where the movie starts to suck. It rambles in the drug induced dialogue and the paranoia of the characters so much that it feels like i’m on drugs and nothing makes sense. Sitting around watching people that are high on drugs have schizophrenic conversations with each other doesn’t make that great of entertainment.

But the slowness and dullness of the plot and the annoying character portrayals were not the worst things about the movie. The worst thing is the fact that most of the characters we meet get forgotten about two thirds of the way through the movie. They just disappear never to be heard from again and it is then we realize the movie is not a epic tale of drug addiction, but more of a convaluted, meandering, mashup of characters that do drugs.

I suggest watching the movie on dvd someday for the novelty of the rotoscoping technique, but you’re not missing out if you skip it.