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A Scanner Darkly (2006)

tomatometer

69

Average Rating: 6.6/10
Reviews Counted: 176
Fresh: 121 | Rotten: 55

A faithful adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel, A Scanner Darkly takes the viewer on a visual and mind-blowing journey into the author's conception of a drug-addled and politically unstable world.

63

Average Rating: 6.7/10
Critic Reviews: 38
Fresh: 24 | Rotten: 14

A faithful adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel, A Scanner Darkly takes the viewer on a visual and mind-blowing journey into the author's conception of a drug-addled and politically unstable world.

audience

70

liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 130,253

My Rating

Movie Info

The war on drugs has been lost, and when a reluctant undercover cop is ordered to spy on those he is closest to, the toll that the mission takes on his sanity is too great to comprehend in director Richard Linklater's rotoscoped take on Philip K. Dick's classic novel. With stratospheric concern over national security prompting paranoid government officials to begin spying on citizens, trust is a luxury and everyone is a suspected criminal until proven otherwise. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is a

Dec 19, 2006

$5.3M

Warner Independent Pictures

Cast

All Critics (176) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (127) | Rotten (56) | DVD (29)

The coolest thing about the movie version of A Scanner Darkly is how very literally it takes the scanner part of that title.

October 18, 2008 Full Review Source: NPR.org | Comment
NPR.org
Top Critic IconTop Critic

As A Scanner Darkly proves, Keanu is the Coolness -- passive blankness, leaden line delivery, and all. Let's hear it for the vague blur.

September 23, 2006 Full Review Source: Slate | Comment
Slate
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Mr. Linklater emerges once again as the Austin auteur par excellence, even if A Scanner Darkly is set in a ratty precinct of Orange County.

July 27, 2006 Full Review Source: New York Observer | Comment
New York Observer
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Linklater's willingness to experiment ... is laudable. But I'm not sure he's reinventing animation here, or even adequately serving that older-than-children animation audience.

July 14, 2006 Full Review Source: Orlando Sentinel | Comment
Orlando Sentinel
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The first film to capture the author's transience and his art.

July 14, 2006 Full Review Source: Houston Chronicle | Comment
Houston Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Here's a guy willing to take risks, willing to tackle challenging material, willing to assume his audience has a brain. Unfortunately, his audience's collective brain is going to be hurting mightily for the first hour of this film.

July 14, 2006 Full Review Source: Detroit News | Comment
Detroit News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

...not for everyone. It's a complicated film that requires patience and, most likely, subsequent viewings to appreciate the jigsaw view of control and paranoia.

April 20, 2011 Full Review Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI) | Comment
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)

In the end, it offers only the slightest of answers and the slimmest of hopes, because that is often all life offers as well. Whether anyone grasps that hope it leaves open for the audience to determine.

March 30, 2011 Full Review Source: ComingSoon.net | Comment
ComingSoon.net

Trippy rotoscoping is the perfect aqueous aesthetic. Unlike many Philip K. Dick adapters exchanging existentialism for explosions, Richard Linklater focuses on Dick's apprehensions about the trust, joy and freedoms at risk for the sake of progress.

September 19, 2010 Full Review Source: Suite101.com | Comment
Suite101.com

Not nearly as coherent, cinematic or fulfilling as it should have been.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: Cinema Autopsy | Comment
Cinema Autopsy

The message is clear and the animation creates a world unlike any other in film, making A Scanner Darkly an easy addition to the must-see list of 2006.

July 6, 2010 Full Review Source: Film School Rejects | Comment
Film School Rejects

Ponders the inherent doom of Slacker transgressors

August 30, 2009 Full Review Source: CinePassion | Comment (1)
CinePassion

Such a brutally gut wrenching disappointment...

April 29, 2009 Full Review Source: Cinema Crazed | Comment
Cinema Crazed

Like many of Dick's parallel-mirror scenarios, this one is air-tight and diabolical. More fresh air in the form of Linklater's humor would be welcome.

April 23, 2009 Full Review Source: Boston Phoenix | Comment
Boston Phoenix

A Scanner Darkly is capable of inducing euphoria if viewers focus on one element of splendor--the acting, concept, dialogue or animation--per viewing.

November 20, 2008 Full Review Source: Hollywood.com | Comment
Hollywood.com

The painted, slightly disorienting look is a good match for the sinister, seriocomic, drug-addled world of the book.

August 7, 2008 Full Review Source: Sacramento News & Review | Comment
Sacramento News & Review

Provocative animated sci-fi. Not for kids.

July 16, 2008 Full Review Source: Common Sense Media | Comment
Common Sense Media

Too talkie to be legitimately entertaining, too dark to be wholly enjoyable and too muddled to be entirely comprehensible, A Scanner Darkly stands as a creative, if unengaging interpretation of its source materia

February 28, 2008 Full Review Source: BrandonFibbs.com | Comment
BrandonFibbs.com

Linklater may have admired the novel -- I do, too -- but that doesn't necessarily make him the ideal director for this material.

August 13, 2007 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | Comment
eFilmCritic.com

a trippy movie that doesn't make it easy for the audience to follow. The story is complex and confusing and theanimation keeps the viewer from entering the tale emotionally or intellectually.

July 14, 2007 Full Review Source: Murphy's Movie Reviews | Comments (3)
Murphy's Movie Reviews

Relentlessly interesting to watch if somewhat less than compelling as a film.

July 14, 2007 Full Review Source: Big Picture Big Sound | Comment
Big Picture Big Sound

this dystopian paranoid thriller tracks addiction in all its highs and lows, and offers a dignified elegy for its misguided casualties.

June 13, 2007 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

Menos interesante que Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly es de todos modos un film inusual que vale la pena verse.

May 21, 2007 Full Review Source: Uruguay Total | Comment
Uruguay Total
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for A Scanner Darkly

This film did not quite reach it's potential. Great source material, acting (casting!) and visuals but the storytelling is sluggish and muddled and there is little opportunity for the viewer to identify with any of the characters' multiple identities.

April 18, 2007
brooklynspo

Super Reviewer

Interesting confluence of live action and animation coupled with imaginative (albeit bizarre) scripting.

January 3, 2009
flixsterman
Randy Tippy

Super Reviewer

    1. Ernie Luckman: Let's just go rescue the orphan gears, Dude!
    – Submitted by William L (3 months ago)
    1. Bob Arctor: Everywhere else can be monitored, but no not at New Path.
    2. Donna Hawthorn: [in the scramble suit] Hey, that's their contract with the gonernment.
    – Submitted by Miles B (6 months ago)
    1. James 'Jim' Barris: There's only one thing we can do to thwart the plot of these albino shape-shifting lizard BITCHES!
    – Submitted by Chris P (9 months ago)
    1. Ernie Luckman: What if they come in through the back door or the bathroom window like that infamous Beatles song?
    – Submitted by Chris P (9 months ago)

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August 31, 2006:
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Foreign Titles

  • Der dunkle Schirm (DE)
  • A Scanner Darkly (FR)
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