Being the Linklater fan that I am I was quite shocked to see him do a Science Fiction film. While I love him he doesn't seem like the type of director that could pull off a film like this when I think of Phillip K. Dick or Science Fiction in general. But surprisingly Linklater makes one of the most mind bendingly masterful science fiction films that I have ever seen. A Scanner Darkly is a film that before you go in you have to get prepared to have your mind blown. That's all I can really say because my mind is spinning after watching this.The animation is truly magnificent as it seems almost real because technically it is. Linklater shot all of this in live action and had an animation team animate over the actors. That's insane! Surprisingly even though this takes place in the future (2013 to be exact) it's quite shocking how Linklater realistically portrayed what the world would look like in that span of time. It isn't a grimy post apocalypse look or an Orwellian utopia, if anything it looks like how the present is.As expected the performances are great with some funny lines that Linklater always has. Keanu plays a character I can only describe as Neo in the present day but instead of leading the war on machines he's leading the war on drugs. Robert Downey Jr. feels reminiscent of Hunter T. Thompson with his erratic behavior and insane characteristics. Woody Harrelson is great as usual playing a pretty believable stoner which only makes me wonder if this is Woody in real life. Winona Ryder is great in her even more mind bending role in this film. I won't give away what's so mind bending about it so I'll just say this, Winona Ryder is very pretty.If I had to compare the complexities of the story A Scanner Darkly is as complicated as Inherent Vice but even more so at points and I think that's what Linklater was going for. You are Bob in this film. You're slowly losing your mind as you go down this rabbit hole of drugs and madness. Linklater captures Phillip K. Dick's paranoid mind set that is shown in his other work vividly. I know Kaufman was involved with the project very early on but surprisingly I'd say that no one could have done a better job than Linklater on this project. I think this is possibly Linklater's most profound piece next to Boyhood.If you seek for a Science Fiction film that will truly get you thinking look no further than A Scanner Darkly. Linklater's most under appreciated film proves that he can stretch beyond the bounds of what we're used to seeing with him (which I still love). Come for the brain churning visuals, stay for the mind twisting story.

Philip K. Dick is the author of several novels cited in the dystopian sci-fi genre, some of which garnered powerful film adaptations such as Ridley Scott's classic hit 'Blade Runner' and the popular Amazon series 'The Man In The High Castle'. These films/novels expressed many thought-provoking themes dealing with society in depression, providing audiences with powerful "what-if" premises. This adaption to Dick's novel 'A Scanner Darkly' gets a provocative treatment with powerful writing and visually stunning rots cope animation by the hands of director Richard Linklater, a filmmaker often known for films revolving around personal relationships between characters, philosophical themes, and the reality of growing up. Unlike his other works, Linklater takes a unique direction in painting a picture of the effects of drug trading and addiction while adopting a compelling visual style. Set in California in the near-future society where the United States was defeated in the U.S/Mexico Drug Wars and an epidemic of drug use spreads across the nation, Bob Arctor (played by Keanu Reeves) is an undercover cop working for a company to capture the distributor of a mind-altering drug known as Substance D. Arctor is unexpectedly drawn into addiction to the drug by this housemates James Barris (played by Robert Downey Jr.), Charles Freck (played by Rory Cochrane), and Ernie Luckman (played by Woody Harrelson); and eventually his girlfriend Donna (played by Winona Ryder). As his addiction to the powerful drug escalates, he begins losing identity and sense of reality around him.This film delivers a fair cache of surprises in this dystopian thriller, and the story presents plenty of twists and turns throughout, some of which wouldn't be as possible if it weren't for the visceral rotoscope animation. One of the most appealing elements includes a "scramble suit" which is comprised of non-stop shifting images of people to disguise the wearer in a series of constant shifting visual identities of personal entities, something that would be nearly impossible to bring to life in a live-action setting. The animation also allows certain advantages to present the story in both an emotional and visual manner in a way that fits well with the plot. Now this doesn't work mark the first time Richard Linklater has taken usage of rotoscope animation. His first usage of this technique reverts back to his 2001 film 'Waking Life' which centered around a series of unrelated character engaging in conversations dealing with human psychology and stream of consciousness. This film however, presents a more polished rotoscope animation and more plot-centric storytelling. With an intelligent screenplay, the story sprouts plenty of surprises dealing with the characters' downward spiral into a perilous world of drug addiction and trading including scenes of creepy hallucinations, and succeeds at an engaging level. The characters feel real and show genuine humanity, and the performances by the cast shine blissfully. Though the story occasional falls into some areas that are both dull and incoherent, it manages to stay strong for most of the run.A Scanner Darkly is a smart and provocative thriller with plenty of thrills and food for thought. It marks one of the best roles by star Keanue Reeves, and an honorable directorial effort by Richard Linklater. This sets a strong example of a film adaption to the a novel done right, a very surprising novel by Philip K. Dick brought to life on screen since Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

This is certainly very much like Waking Life, in the obvious, similar ways. But while both are sort of hard to get into in their own ways, the plot here is just way too complicated. Maybe rewatches are needed, but a plot still needs to engage even if we don't fully get it or understand it, we need to be engaged and interested enough to continue. I wasn't totally bored, but it was really hard. If anything, the animation style is what made me stay with it, and it does get better as it goes on, more interesting to the point that I can say I barely, mildly liked it. The performances are pretty fantastic, especially Winona Ryder, and Reeves is as unengaging as ever.

Adapter/director Richard Linklater achieved at least three remarkable things with A Scanner Darkly: he created the most faithful movie adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel or short story ever; he created an outstanding science-fiction film; and he maximized the limited acting ability of Keanu Reeves by casting Reeves as a burnt-out case in the midst of a drug-fuelled mental breakdown.Reeves plays Bob Arctor, a near-future California undercover government narc charged by his superiors with helping win the war against Substance D, a highly addictive illegal substance that rapidly causes irreversible brain damage in those addicted to it, partially by severing the connection between an addict's left and right brain hemispheres.Arctor is deep undercover, sharing a house with two other addicts and buying Substance D from a third in increasingly difficult-to-supply mass quantities in the hopes of moving up the supply chain. The government knows what the main ingredient of Substance D derives from -- a small, blue-flowered plant -- but it doesn't know who is growing it, refining it, and putting it on the street.Dick based much of A Scanner Darkly on his own drug experiences of the 1960's and 1970's, experiences which saw him committed to a mental asylum for a time, and experiences which caused him to interact with a large number of doomed and mostly doomed addicts. Indeed, the movie appends a portion of the novel's afterword to the end of the movie -- a roll call of the dead and damaged.The hyper-colourful, rotoscoped animation Linklater uses here (he first used it in Waking Life) suits the material and the tone of that material -- the movie looks like a fever dream, a pulsating nightmare in which nothing is stable. All the principals deliver outstanding performances, including Reeves, and perhaps most notably Robert Downey Jr., who presents us with a jittery speed freak (Substance D appears to be at least partially an amphetamine) over-bursting with his own paranoid delusions and fantasies.The title is a play on the Biblical phrase 'Through a glass, darkly': there are scanners in this movie, but they aren't the Cronenberg variety.