David Cronenberg Marathon: Scanners (1981) Review

Fifteen minutes into this film a character's head explodes in an incredibly gory and amazing special effect. I must admit that I rewound the film over a dozen times watching this memorable scene over and over. This single scene makes this film worth watching, as I haven't seen any other films that have pulled off an effect this great. David Cronenberg did a great job with most aspects of this movie, the special effects being the most memorable part. However the film is also very well cast, with Micheal Ironside giving an excellent performance, as well as the main characters being actors that were unknown to me, yet were still able to achieve incredible characterization.

The writing is the weakest portion of the film, especially around the ending in which the cliche twists are revealed.  The best scenes in the movie actually include little or no dialog, mostly in which Cameron scans people or deals with his ability of scanning. The scanning process looks incredibly painful, enhanced by great acting as well as some amazing sound effects that were able to make myself feel uneasy. The best aspects from the film all come from the scanning process, whether it be a head exploding or the uneasiness of the scans.

Be cautious as spoilers do follow this section as I will be spoiling the ending. One great thing about the ending of this film is the horrific scanner duel that occurs between the main characters Cameron and Revak. Cameron's body literally melts in a cluster of fire and gore, which is both unsettling and gorgeous, rival gore effects rendered by computers have yet to achieve the beauty of organic effects. The ending twist is incredibly lame and brings down the interesting and intense story, as the film concludes with Revak revealing that Cameron is his brother and that he has created an entire new generation of scanners in order to take over the world. Back in the eighties this may have been a huge twist that hadn't been done over nine-thousand times before, but watching today I found it to be an incredibly weak and cliche ending to an original and suspenseful story. BUT A GUY'S HEAD FUCKING EXPLODES!!!

Just watch this film for that one scene and it's worth it. It is just so amazingly wonderfully gory and gorgeous to watch!

Rating: 5/10