A Scanner Darkly

The director Richard Linklater already did a similar animation titled, Waking Life, which was a pretty decent, experimental, animation. But A Scanner Darkly is more serious, coherent narrative attempt at venerable Philip K. Dick's novel.

I wasn't sure why he revisited using rotoscope animation for this except the characters in this movie wear scramble suits that constantly shape-shifts, blurring visuals , doubting your sense of vision. I read from his Wired interview last year that he had such problems with this movie that he bowed he will never do an animation project again, and I can see why. However, his gamble and his team of animators' works paid off as the visuals are treats, the characters are great with solid acting all around, and the narrative pace is breath-taking under the veteran direction.

Watching this movie is a head-spinning trip that almost inducing hallucination, confounding your cognitive senses in all turns. "What does scanner see?"

Richard Linklater has another great film under his credit, no doubt, and the film world became a far richer from this work.