Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum![]()
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The![]()
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star![]()
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The![]()
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The![]()
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An![]()
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox![]()
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo![]()
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The![]()
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The![]()
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D![]()
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Scanner Darkly, A
EMAILPRINTWarner Independent Pictures

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 83 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Animation | Drama | Mystery | Sci-fi | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Richard Linklater
Philip K. Dick (novel)
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 7, 2006
DVD: December 19, 2006
Running Time: 100 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for drug and sexual content, language and a brief violent image
Starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, and Rory Cochrane
Based on legendary science-fiction author Philip K. Dick’s own experiences, A Scanner Darkly tells the darkly comedic, caustic, but deeply tragic tale of drug use in the modern world. The film plays like a graphic novel come to life with live-action photography overlaid with an advanced animation process -- a method known as interpolated rotoscoping, first employed in writer/director Richard Linklater’s 2001 film "Waking Life" -- to create a haunting version of America, seven years from now. (Warner Independent Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Bad New Bears Before Sunrise Before Sunset Dazed and Confused Fast Food Nation School of Rock Suburbia Tape The Newton Boys Waking Life
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Premiere Glenn Kenny
The most impressive thing about the film's technical wizardry is, finally, how unimpressive it is. One doesn't leave the movie with a mind blown by visual bedazzlement but with a soul shattered by the profound sense of tragedy Linklater and company so beautifully put across.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
The casting of Reeves in the lead role is inspired: who better than the star of "The Matrix" and its sequels, a trilogy that borrows heavily from Dick's sensibility and obsessions, to play a personality split through overindulgence in drugs and manipulation by outside forces he barely recognizes?
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Probably the most faithful to the writer's tortured spirit. It's the kind of movie that gets under your skin - and stays there.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
The brilliance of A Scanner Darkly is how it suggests, without bombast or fanfare, the ways in which the real world has come to resemble the dark world of comic books.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Rob Nelson
What a breath of fresh air this stifling, claustrophobic, boldly uningratiating vision of an American subculture's last gasp imparts to its contrarian core audience. (Call me a hopeless addict: I've seen it three times.)
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Without its animation, A Scanner Darkly would have made a fine cautionary tale about drug addiction, paranoia and institutional treachery in a police state. But with a technique that turns the existing live action into a two-dimensional cartoon, the movie goes one -- maybe even 10 -- better. It becomes its own living, breathing metaphor.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It's one of the most faithful movie adaptations of any Dick story to date, and it comes from the scariest of all his books, as well as the truest.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
There's no other filmmaker, living or dead, who could produce a futuristic sci-fi nightmare, a hipster comedy, a haunting film noir and a cartoon, all in the same movie.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Downey, who, having grasped that he's playing a cartoon character, delivers the most animated performance. (Midway through 2006, this supporting turn is the performance to beat in what seems the year's American movie to beat.)
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Christopher Orr
As they (Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson) bicker and banter, threaten one another with small household objects, and try (unsuccessfully) to determine the number of gears on a bicycle, they display a combination of irritability and incompetence that is the soul of comedy.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Turns out to be more ordinary than the recipe might suggest. Oh, it's dense and funny and assured, but it's also chatty and listless in a fashion that constrains a narrative film, which, however reluctantly, it is.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
With everything this film has going for it - humor, intelligence and a splendid ensemble - Richard Linklater's nightmare drug movie, A Scanner Darkly, should be continually compelling. But it loses its fizz after a strong series of pops.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
There's conspiracy here, as there is in all of Dick's books, and it wraps the film up with a moving but somewhat neat bowtie.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
But transforming full, live-action performances into quavering cartoons isn't inherently lyrical, and here it produces the jittery sense of a world dissolving into flat forms and buzzing prattle.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Doesn't quite live up to the promise of its opening sequence, but it's still an audacious offering during a season of brain-dead blockbusters.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub
The visual style and lethargic pace can be frustrating -- at least if you're sober -- but the animated tragedy is still a success.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
This gifted writer-director isn't out to dull the masses with cinematic opium. Embedded in the visionary headtrip of A Scanner Darkly is a hotly political call to arms.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
The film is weirdly fascinating in its own maverick way.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Rotoscoping makes certain sense for a film about cognitive dissonance and alternative realities, though both the vocal and gestural performances by Mr. Reeves, Mr. Harrelson and, in particular, the wonderful Mr. Downey make me wish that we were watching them in live action.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
Deeply intriguing but almost too-faithful adaptation of Philip K. Dick's nightmarish 1977 novel.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Which makes it all the more frustrating that the film doesn't quite work, and that it drags from episode to episode--some are brilliant, most merely intriguing--with little momentum.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
As a whole, the film has too little character and/or plot development to sustain narrative interest. What A Scanner Darkly excels at is mood and tone.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Definitely not for everyone. It's a very bleak story with uneven pacing and a narrative whose jumps in time are confusing and occasionally infuriating. But the post-apocalyptic mood blends well with its uniquely stylized look and surreal story.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
If ever there was a movie more destined to become a cult phenomenon, I don't know if I can name it.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Smartly cast, in the sense that Reeves, gloomy and pained, and Harrelson, confused and explosive, both seem befuddled while Downey, as the devious, intellectual Barris, is befuddling.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Scanner is mostly all talk, and the talk is entertaining only when it's coming from Downey. The actor's long history of drug abuse taught him a thing or two about cooked behavior, and he gives some anxious run-on monologues that are very funny.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It's watchable, due to the rotoscoping technique...It's also as lightweight as the smoke rings blown by one of many perverse, dull characters.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
More than once during A Scanner Darkly, you find yourself wishing these characters would just shut up.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
Isn't as dark or sinister as its source material, but it comes closer than any other filmed attempts to this point. It may only be a decent movie, but it's a pretty fine PKD adaptation.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer David Hiltbrand
A rambling depiction of a junkie's descent into zombitude.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
In A Scanner Darkly, we're watching other people freak out, but the film is maddening to sit through because their freak-outs never become ours.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge
Audiences will have to seek out their own peculiar diversions in order to last the whole course of this demi-dud.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 83 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Rory P. gave it a6:
I'm not usually a fan of Robert Downey Jr, but I thought he was very good in this film. He managed to make something striking out of his typical funny/oddball shtick, creating a presence in his neurotic character that mananged to be both weak and threatening. In fact, I liked his performance so much that, as i watched it, i began wishing i could see him acting the part without all the rotoscoping sh*t hiding the performance. Rory Cochrane on the other hand, was over the top in a way that perfectly suited the rotoscope format and the tone of the film. I really hope he gets out of CSI and gets into some movies/non-cack tv shows. I'd love to see him in a decent role. Keanu does his sullen thing again. Its alright, just about. The rotoscoping thing is good, and the acting is good enough, and their is some good dialogue. Its just all very slow and protracted though. its all a bit of a whimper. An unfocused one at that. I'd say this film is most suitable for dedicated fans of Mr. Dick and connoisseurs of film production. Other then that, i'd say you'll be relatively bored of the whole thing, interesting themes and all, after a hour or so.
Kent C. gave it a5:
Artistic creativity and vision isn't enough to change the confusing plot.
Donal M. gave it a10:
Absolutely brilliant.Good storyline, class twist at the end. Rotoscope effect just finishes it off.Creeped me out the first time, had to watch it again and again to understand it more.
Sergey M gave it an8:
Very cool, stylish psychedelic movie!
Brendan M. gave it a9:
A Scanner Darkly is extremly provocative, and visualy stunning. The story really sends a message to modern day society about the what if situation if the war on drugs is lost, and how a person can be controlled by peopel who he thinks are his friends. Its a haunting tale, as well as a cauntionary one, and is not to be missed by anyone interested in good film.
Martin A. gave it a9:
What makes my blood boil about reading these 'public' reviews is that people think that if a film doesn't tick boxes, its "boring, pretentious and no plot character/development." And you will see the same trite comments on every film review on this website. Films like this are attempting to redesign cinema. And in many ways this film is very original. This film circulates around the idea and connotations of drugs and Linklater tries to incorporate this into every aspect. The most obvious aspect of this is the aestetics, the constantly shifting and changing shapes indicate the idea of instability. The plot is murky and constantly fluctuating from comedy to existential questioning andthe dialogue ranges from scientic journal extracts to inane alcoholic banter. None of the dialogue is "meaningless" it all serves a purpose. The film is fantastic because it shows the conflicting mentalities of society and drug user, demonstrated prominently by the quote "you're either on substance d, or you havent tried it." Its a great film.
Jordan K gave it an8:
Those who gave it a red score, and ridiculed the director for the "boring, meaningless dialog, with the 'twist' at the end, which was very predictable" probably haven't read Philip K. Dick. If they had read Dick, they may have been able to appreciate how sincerely the director tried to transfer Dick's style and story to film. This film was masterful, even with Keanu Reeves. Anyone who hated this film is probably illeterate in film and books.
