Scanners (1981) - film review

After making a telepathic attack on a woman in a shopping mall, down-and-out Cameron Vale is tranquillised and captured by ConSec, a high-tech security systems company.  Vale is identified as a Scanner, a rare example of a human being with highly developed powers of extrasensory perception.  One of ConSec’s senior scientists Dr Paul Ruth recruits Vale for a dangerous but vital mission - to track down a rogue Scanner named Darryl Revok, who intends using his powers for purely evil ends.  Vale makes contact with some other Scanners, but these are ruthlessly slaughtered by Revok.  The latter has absolutely no intention of being captured by ConSec and has a sinister purpose in mind for Vale...

David Cronenberg’s first foray into sci-fi thriller territory, Scanners had the potential to be one of his finest films, but whilst it deals imaginatively with some interesting and genuinely chilling concepts, it falls down massively in the execution.  The film’s main failings are a lack of narrative coherence, an over-reliance on techno-babble (of the kind you would expect to see only in a low-grade B-movie) and a dearth of believable characters.   This can largely be put down to the chaotic conditions under which the film was made.  Owing to a crazy production schedule, which he had no control over, Cronenberg ended up scripting scenes in the morning ahead of the day’s shoot, which explains why the plot barely hangs together and why the characters are in the main faceless nonentities who exist merely to service the plot.

Cronenberg’s direction is as slick, focused and inventive as ever, and the film features some of his most impressive special effects (most notably the famous, and oft-imitated, exploding head sequence), but the end result feels hopelessly muddled and unsatisfying.  On the acting front, the film is generally well-cast, the one obvious let-down being Stephen Lack who, as the principal good guy, delivers his lines so flatly that you could easily convince yourself that he was an android with a personality bypass and batteries that badly need recharging.  Not having a central character we can sympathise with is certainly a handicap, but at least Scanners offers up a seriously nasty piece of work as the main villain of the piece, Darryl Revok, played with an intense demonic relish by Michael Ironside.  Despite the mixed reviews it received, Scanners was one of Cronenberg’s biggest box office successes and one of his most influential films, inspiring a number of inferior sequels and spin-offs.

© Steve Chandler 2011

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