Review of A Scanner Darkly (2006) by Necromus — 06 Dec 2012

I went into this movie not really knowing anything about it other than it had Keanu Reeves in it and it was a movie about reality not being what it seems (hmm, where have I seen that idea before, cough, Matrix, cough..). I soon figured out it is a film about the Illuminati and the New World Order (I think) because the whole movie is filled with Illuminati symbolism on T-Shirts, in pictures on the walls, etc., and there is even a scene with Alex Jones shouting through a megaphone protesting the New World Order and getting tasered. Unfortunately, while that is a topic I love to see movies educating the public about, this movie fails to do that. My girlfriend saw this with me and after the scene of Alex Jones just popping up and getting tasered, she was like: "who the hell was that and what was that all about?". Now, I recently learned that this movie is based upon a novel written in 1977 about "monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states" according to Wikipedia. Now if the Alex Jones and Illuminati stuff was just added to the story to update it to today's conspiracy culture then actually that is kind of cool and I'm probably being too hard on it.

But, either way, this movie is just a jumbled mess of a plot that does not make sense to anyone. The movie is about people on drugs, is this movie supposed to be interpreted as if you are viewing it on drugs? Because that is what this movie feels like to watch, a movie that is incomprehensible like you are watching it on a high dosage of morphine (without the nice buzz) after you recently had major surgery at the hospital. The animation overlay idea was cool, but really, the emotion of the actors and actresses was lost in translation, I'd much rather see the real facial expressions of the actors/actresses than just a scribbly sketch of them which makes the movie really boring.