Right off the bat I have to confess that I had to purposefully put at least a few days between this movie and “Shocker”. Not because I thought they’d be the same movie but this film harkens back to that same style of cover box nostalgia I had for the Craven vehicle from a few days ago. I’m sure the electrified-esque shock of the the man on the artwork for this film is fairly iconic to just about anyone who visited a horror movie section of a video store in the 80’s or 90’s. Honestly, outside of that image, I don’t know that there was really anything else pushing me to even add this one to the list. But it felt like it was time to finally crack this one open and see what’s inside. That picture of a stiffened man in suit with eyes rolled back looking as though a million volts were being pushed through his body was one I remember vividly from childhood. Mouth agape and veins protruding viciously through the skin amidst a hazy halo of ethereal undoing was a haunting image that popped right off that VHS box and firmly planted itself in my memory. As I fired the flick up off of MAX where it’s currently streaming, I was checking IMDb, assuming I’d find Kevin McCarthy of UHF and The Twilight Zone movie fame. Counting him as the poor man’s Ted Knight, I had always assumed he was the man in that image but it turned out to not be the case. I won’t give away who it is because it’s clearly a pivotal moment in the film and though I’m not keen on a rewatch, it doesn’t mean I just want to spoil the fun for you.
My other admission, which I suppose is somewhat implicit due to my overall ignorance of the film, is that I had no idea this was a David Cronenberg film. I’m not one for body horror, really. I also don’t hold Cronenberg up on a pedestal as many horror devotees do. Not that I think he’s a poor filmmaker. I do enjoy “The Fly” despite there being some seriously disgusting moments in it, which I know are explicitly his doing. He seems like a skilled director with a very distinct vision. I just can’t say I align with him on presentation. I don’t know if I just don’t get it or if I’m missing something but when it comes to the Crone, I’m just not hip to his jive, as the cool kids are saying, I believe. Last year I explored his Videodrome. Not that I had lived a lifelong curiosity about the film but I knew it was his from the circles I had traveled in at that point. And Cronenberg as a whole package is something I’ve probably only really come to identify the hallmarks in recent years. If Carpenter, Craven, and Romero were the names associated with horror royalty, I think I’d have pegged Cronenberg as a Duke. I don’t particularly understand how all that works out but I’m comfortable with my assessment and don’t need it explained to me. We’ll just go with Duke. I think Cronenberg would probably be ok with it himself because Duke is a cool name along with an auspicious title. I can’t say that seeing his name in the opening credits inspired a great deal of confidence in the impending viewing of the film but I didn’t let it necessarily cloud my judgement either. It was more of a notation I filed and did my best to keep an open mind.
So what did I like about the film? First of all, it was deliciously 80’s. That aesthetic of what movies in the 80’s looked like sometimes just feels right, especially in the horror genre. The nice thing about early 80’s is you have that leftover blending of the outgoing 70’s style with the advent of the incoming new wave of the 1980’s. It’s a weird sort of feeling because it feels comfortable since it’s home but it’s also inherently off putting so it sort of sets the film in just the right tone to begin with. Being a tasty treat from that decade of decadence, I did notice a blast from the past in the opening credits that excited me a bit. Michael Ironside is prominently featured in this film. I didn’t want to just assume he’d be the bad guy but it was an 80’s movie with the name Michael Ironside in the opening credits. Not sure if they wanted me to assume he’d be anything but the bad guy in this movie. And not to be too spoilery since this movie is 43 years old, but Michael Ironside is definitely the bad guy in this movie. So I really enjoyed that.
The other thing, and this is me being somewhat objective here, is that I have to give credit where credit is due. I have already said that I do not like body horror. While I don’t think this film specifically crosses over into “gore” per se, there’s an element of the body horror stuff where I’m not sure how to draw a line. That being said, I do have to give it to the people involved in this film for the practical ways in which they create those haunting images on screen. In the initial sequence featuring Ironside, a man’s head explodes. He’s been “scanned”. In this scanning, his head is forcibly exploded and it’s a pretty intense affair. I feel like once upon a time I watched some kind of movie magic show where this effect from this scene was explained because I remember some of the visuals from it. But I don’t think until I saw the scene in motion did I realize that it was from this movie. There are a handful of times when they employ some fairly interesting makeup and other practical effects to create scenes of horror and while it’s not my cup of tea, it is still an impressive feat at times. So I was relatively impressed by the practical ways in which they accomplished the blood and guts of it all. In so many movies today, it’s all just CGI which causes us to be desensitized to that kind of effect. I don’t know that we realize it but I think it does more to take us out of the moment than we care to, actually. That makes the practicality of the effects in this film so much of a positive because it amplifies the impact of exactly what is happening on screen. And for that, I really do have to give it to this film in spite of my otherwise objection.
That takes us to the things that I didn’t care for all that much. My biggest complaint is that the movie is just boring. At no point did I really feel engaged with the story at all. There was little that kept me interested in the characters or what they were doing. It’s one of those movies that starts off in a place that presumes we know what’s going on and then doubles back to explain what’s going on. We are meant to know or glean quickly what a “Scanner” is. Now it’s not a terribly hard phenomenon to sus out but at the same time, the “action” the actors take to show they are scanning someone seems kind of like if you were playing charades and trying to act out a brain freeze. People wince in pain and flash you some crazy eyes. Then they sort of start shaking like they are intending to do something with mind powers they don’t have. Only in this movie, they do have those mind powers. That’s what “scanning” is. It’s a telekinetic energy that certain people possess. It’s like less than 300 people in the whole world. And they have a club. But one of the things you can do if you’re a really powerful scanner is blow people’s heads up. Lower level scanning causes nosebleeds. It reminded me a lot of when SNL parodied the powers that Christopher Walken had in The Dead Zone where he would touch someone and have a shocking vision. He would throw himself back physically as though he was overwhelmed by something unseen, put on even crazier eyes (because Walken is walkin’ around with already pretty crazy eyes as is) and the other person would respond with a worried look. This didn’t overtly take me out of the movie but it is a little cringey when you’re just watching the screen flash back and forth between two characters just sort of looking at each other really oddly waiting for something to happen. Spoiler alert (for a movie that’s 43 years old, mind you) that the final scene is the two most powerful scanners trying to kill each other. If they hadn’t used those practical effects I was talking about, it would just be ample footage of two guys really hamming it up for the camera as they pretend one of them is succumbing to the others strange looks. If I wasn’t watching the film with a somewhat serious eye about me, it would have been pretty easy to call shenanigans and just crack myself up at the ridiculous nature of it all.
The other thing about the actors is everybody is just sort of meh. Nobody really does much to bring the story to life. In fact, it’s like watching mannequins used for horrible stop animation because everyone is incredibly stiff. Plus the front to back progression of the story is kind of like a poorly written video game where it’s stage by stage movement to find this guy and then this guy eventually moving your way to the final boss. The story was pretty boring as I said but I’ve seen movies where that’s a factor but the actors swoop in and do their best to bring it to life in meaningful ways. With the biggest name seemingly being Michael Ironside, a man already known for basically one facial expression and type cast as the bad guy (which he is here as well) there’s just not a lot of depth on the bench for the film to be rescued by talented actors doing their best. So by the time it was over I was really just relieved. There are a number of dynamic roles that could have easily been played by low grade actors that didn’t even need to be big stars. I’d have loved a Paul Gleason in the mix instead of Lawrence Dane as Braedon Keller. And no, I didn’t pay close enough attention to just know those names. I had to look them up. I was just going to say “the cop guy”. But that doesn’t do you, my imaginary reader, any good. Not that proper nouns fill in a lot of gaps but at least I put in the effort. Paul Gleason is the principal from Breakfast Club. I’ll at least shortcut that one for you. I was also recasting a bit for a modern remake. Ben Mendelsohn would make a great Cameron Vale, aka our main protagonist. He would cost more but he’d also bring a LOT more to the movie. Honestly, movies like Scanners, at least to me, are the kinds of movies I’d love to see get modern remakes with legitimately good actors. If you took this story, updated it a bit and cast it well, I think you could get a solid remake that would be miles away more interesting. You don’t even really need to change the overall story. Just modernize the necessary things, recast the roles with capable people and give them the room to make this movie better. I feel like it can be done.
Ultimately I feel like I would personally give this film another rating of C. I’m tempted to downgrade it to C- just because it was boring but honestly for me a C rating is something I didn’t really hate but I’m also probably never going to be tempted to watch it again. It’s not making the collection by any means. But if somebody asked me a detail about this movie in 5 years I’d gladly admit “I remember watching that one but I couldn’t tell you much about it.” Like if the inquiry was one of the actors outside of Ironside or a character’s name. That information is not sticking with me. I don’t regret watching it. It’s one of those films that a part of me always needed to digest at some point. It was a moral imperative. I know now that it’s not one I love. But I had to watch it to know that. There was no way around it. I’m glad I did and that I finally scratched that cinematic itch. It also helps me to know that I’m really not a Cronenberg guy. Sometimes information like that is valuable. Sometimes for laughs I’ll go hard on a film just because. You can do it to any movie, even ones you love. I joke on Home Alone a lot for some of the silly little errors I’ve missed or how a modern retelling of that movie shows just how stuck in time the plot of it really is. But no matter what I do to mock Home Alone, it always remains one of my all time favorite movies. So joking on a movie isn’t necessarily a direct sign of disrespect. You could easily watch Scanners and joke on it pretty hard if you wanted to. But the value in knowing that a particular director doesn’t really do it for me is helpful. I know not every director is nothing but slam dunk winners. David Fincher and Guy Ritchie are two of my favorites and both of them have glaring holes in their filmography. I will never EVER watch the live remake of Aladdin (one of my two all time favorite animated Disney films) because of the disrespect of recasting Robin Williams. The right decision would have been to leave it alone. But because of this film being a Guy Ritchie production, I can’t ever own the entirety of his catalogue because I refuse to watch, let alone own, that movie. Like I said, I do enjoy The Fly. More qualified actors making the story work properly. Not anywhere near as experienced as those actors are in life now. But they are both gifted actors who played in that movie well. But right now I’m 1 for 3 on Cronenberg and I don’t know that there’s anything in his repertoire for me that I’m really going to enjoy considerably. And that’s ok. Nobody just enjoys all films. No matter what they say. So it’s ok to not like everything. And even if Scanners is somebody’s favorite film, it doesn’t have to be mine and that’s ok. So if you’re a child of the 80’s and you remember seeing this cover box in the video store, I’d recommend you knock this one out so it’s not on your list anymore. It’s not scary. It’s not all that good. It’s just there. But some things, just to ensure we are all united by way of a common experience, have to be experienced. So find a lazy Saturday this October and check out Scanners if you like. On that note, I’ll get out of here until next time, I’ll catch you on the flip side.
