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
Scanners
10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can’t Breathe. 20 Seconds: You Explode.
1981 · 1h 43m · R
Horror, Science Fiction
Directed by
David Cronenberg
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Scanners
Overview
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 and cast
- David Cronenberg Director
- Stephen Lack as Cameron Vale
- Jennifer O'Neill as Kim Obrist
- Michael Ironside as Darryl Revok
- Patrick McGoohan as Dr. Paul Ruth
- Lawrence Dane as Braedon Keller
- Robert A. Silverman as Benjamin Pierce
- Lee Broker as Security One
- Mavor Moore as Trevellyan
- Adam Ludwig as Arno Crostic
- Murray Cruchley as Programmer 1
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
69%
Tomatometer
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
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
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
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
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Comments
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