Scanners
10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can’t Breathe. 20 Seconds: You Explode.
10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can’t Breathe. 20 Second...
Horror, Science Fiction
-
1981
Available on
Country
A scientist trains a man with an advanced telepathic ability called 'scanning' to stop a dangerous Scanner with extraordinary psychic powers from waging war against non-Scanners.
Director:
Cast:
Similar
Details
Runtime:
103 min
Release date:
14 Jan 1981
Country:
CA
Languages:
English
Budget:
$4,100,000
Revenue:
$14,225,876
Awards:
3 wins & 9 nominations total
Top Critics Reviews
fresh:
Like Tod Browning, Cronenberg doesn't have the stylistic resources to match the forcefulness of his ideas, but his movies remain in the mind for the pull of their private obsessions.
– Dave Kehr,
Chicago Reader,
5 Jun 2007
fresh:
Part conspiracy thriller, part political tract, it is Cronenberg's most coherent movie to date, drawing a dark (but bland) world in which corporate executives engineer human conception to produce ever more powerful mental samurai.
– Derek Adams,
Time Out,
24 Jun 2006
rotten:
Scanners is so lockstep that we are basically reduced to watching the special effects, which are good but curiously abstract, because we don't much care about the people they're happening around.
– Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
23 Oct 2004
rotten:
The quality of the film's inventiveness is not always of the first order, which is too bad because Mr. Cronenberg does seem to be a director-writer of some style.
– Vincent Canby,
New York Times,
30 Aug 2004
rotten:
All this should give fans of David Cronenberg's previous pix their money's worth, although lack of any rooting interest vitiates any possible suspense and highly elegant visual style works against much shock value.
– ,
Variety,
5 Jun 2007