Review of A Scanner Darkly (2006) by Gabriel Arthur P — 07 Jul 2016

This was both really interesting and really disappointing. I had heard a million great things about this movie, none of which made any sense, and still I didn't watch it. I hate watching any movie that everybody in the country is talking about because I hate watching any movie that I don't get to watch completely fresh and unprepared.

So "A Scanner Darkly" got to sit around for, I dunno, a decade or so until I couldn't remember the last time somebody had mentioned it. I knew the basic premise: Keanu Reeves and some other actors get rotoscoped into some weird futuristic dystopia, hooray.

It sounded pretty boring, actually. But in the intervening years I've grown to respect Keanu Reeves, and now I felt I could watch this movie with an even temperament. The film itself is one of those drug house movies.

You know the ones, where there's a bunch of people doing drugs trying to live together. That's a genre, right? "Drug house movie"? Any ways, it's not too boring. It has a drop-off ending but you know what, it's Philip K.

Dick and it's heart-touching in its sincerity. 4/5.