A Scanner Darkly (Film Review)

As a huge fan of the work of Philip K. Dick, I am usually disappointed with the film adaptations of his books, aside from Total Recall, It is not entirely because of the attempts by the filmmakers or change in dialog per say, but due to the fact that much of what he writes about is incredibly subjectively visual to the individual reading the story that is difficult to capture on Film the images and ideas expressed so elegantly in his books. For example, The scramble suit was a very interesting concept in the book but was difficult to carry off in the film even with the rotoscoping, overall the film was a very disappointing adaptation and pretentious as a translation from a difficult book to the screen. I have no doubt Linklater tried very hard when making this film and I can't help wondering if the only reason Linklater used the rotoscoping technique was to compensate for the difficulty of creating a scramble suit. The film would have been much stronger if it was not in animation. The animation lent it to seem like a Japanamation, or Anime which puts it more in the realm of fantasy. Keep it real man! this was a story about Dick's real life experience's set in very near future under the mask of "Science Fiction", if anything, it would have been better shot in black and white. Couldn't get into the parts where they were paranoid about the house being surveyed or broken into, or set up. Most of the jokes seemed forced or trying very hard to be funny. Woody Harrelsons character was over the top and uneven, Winona was hot, but other than that pointless, They fail to demonstrate a larger world around them in the context of the individuals drug abuse, that is, we only see four people in a house and they hardly interact with anyone in society, which is alledgedly a society of narc corps and population of 20 percent addicts, They only semi dabble with the actual experience of being on the drug, we don't see them high enough or hallucinating, but then again Johnny Depp and Benicio in "Fear and Loathing" are a high standard to beat. Is Substance D a hallucinogen? speed? downer? we don't know. All in all, worth seeing if you are a PKD fan or a fan of drug films as other people have mentioned on this site, but overall could have been more realized and slightly less pretentious.

I can't help but wonder if a director like Terry Gilliam or David Fincher may have been better suited to direct of dark film of this caliber. Kubrick would have been fantastic!