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Metascore
60 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 8 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
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  1. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    80
    Cronenberg delivers.
  2. Variety
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not Credited)
    80
    Scanners offers at least one literally eye-popping moment and another that can only be called mind-blowing.
  3. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not Credited)
    75
    Scanners is a memorable and absorbing genre entertainment.
  4. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Jay Carr
    63
    The film is more interesting as a phenomenon than as a movie. [27 Feb 1981]
    All this critic's reviews
  5. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Vincent Canby
    60
    Unfortunately the plot thickens so rapidly and so lumpily that one very soon loses interest in spite of the quite stunning and gory special effects.
  6. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Dave Kehr
    60
    One of the most technically proficient of David Cronenberg's early gnawing, Canadian-made horror movies, though it lacks both the logic and the queasy sexual subtext that made his still earlier work - "Rabid," "They Came From Within" - so memorably revolting.
  7. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    50
    Scanners is a new horror film made with enough craft and skill that it could have been very good, if it could find a way to make us care about it.
  8. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Jay Scott
    50
    The larger budget has given Scanners a high-gloss Hollywood look, the editing is occasionally elegant and the special effects, which consist mostly of imaginative ways of turning actors into meat, provoke from the audience the desired response ("Oh, yuk]"), but he is careful to keep the violence within currently accepted boundaries. [19 Jan 1981]
    All this critic's reviews
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