People who haven't seen "Scanners" are only familiar with the scene where the one guy's head explodes. That's really it. Judging from that, you'd think it would be a movie with a lot of explosions and killing. Okay, there is some of that near the end. I admit some of the acting could be better. I still praise this film for being so real. Yeah, not easy for a film about psychic powers to be. I really appreciate the dialogue and how everyone works together. The best part is probably the main twist or twists near the end. We even get a nice credit sequence that represents the rest of the film. While not one of my favorites, it's certainly watchable. I had no idea this was Canadian. ***

What are Scanners?Scanners are freaks of nature, born with a certain form of ESP; able to control minds and damage bodies at their will.Scanners is a mysterious, brooding film with good cinematography and a dark atmosphere to keep it going. Maybe I expected too little of this; I thought it was just going to be a fun B-movie from the 80's, which it is. But yet it feels more than that. I think this film is a lot like Inception and the original Highlander movie, a mysterious film that quickly unfolds over the course of the film. At the start, we see a man eat some leftovers from a table, and an old woman is seen gossiping insults about him. The man stares at her, and suddenly she goes into a major seizure. Suddenly, men in suits start chasing after the man through the mall, and you ask yourself, who are these people? What's going on?! The entire film is like this one scene, which is what makes this such a masterpiece. David Cronenberg should be proud of this achievement he made in 1981, a suspenseful, eerie and mysterious film that never loses it's own grip on the pacing. Overall, because of the greatness of this film, I just had to rate it a 10/10. An absolute masterpiece, recommended.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm only now working my way through the Cronenberg "library" of horror. I'd seen The Fly, Videodrome and Naked Lunch in the past - and recently saw Videodrome again.Today, I saw Scanners for the first time. Yes, I've *always* known about that one scene - that's iconic.I have to say - and this is coming from a horror aficionado (I consider Carpenter's Thing, Jacob's Ladder, The Shining and The Changeling some of the best), Scanners is VERY VERY GOOD.It's got smart metaphors, subtle social criticism and great writing. I'm no fan at all of reboots - but I imagine this is an already very solid story that could be made even better by a remake. But ONLY if Cronenberg is in charge and keeps it's soul in the right place.If you're an intelligent horror buff, Scanners is a MUST SEE.Next for me... Probably The Brood or Shivers... :P

This is a passable sci-fi story, but only if you're willing to overlook many of the internal inconsistencies. For example, Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside) and Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) were both born under the influence of a synthetic drug called ephemerol, but Vale wasn't aware of it while his older brother was. So Vale goes his entire life not knowing who his parents were or where he came from, and with no childhood memories. Why wouldn't he have questioned his existence a long time ago? Or how about that business of Vale linking up his own nervous system with the nervous system of a computer? Really? How does that work? Oh yeah, over a phone line. See, I was paying attention, but that was just a bit too esoteric to grasp for this viewer, who manages to think about these things while watching a movie. Perhaps David Cronenberg, who wrote the script as well as directed, could have consulted with Captain James T. Kirk on how to effectively initiate a self destruct sequence on a computer program; Kirk did it more than once in his 'Star Trek' series run.Say, here's another one - early in the picture it was established that ephemerol can disrupt a scanner's telepathic ability, but near the end of the story, it's stated by Revok that ephemerol imparted scanning ability to unborn children still in the womb. Having it both ways seems like a contradiction in terms, but maybe I'm just overthinking the whole concept. Best thing for me to do at this point is take a biocarbon amalgamate and see a doctor in the morning.