Film Review: Scanners (18) (Canada 1981) (Director: David Cronenberg) Friday 22.06.2012 23:00 The Cameo Cinema Screen Two, Edinburgh 

This is the second early Cronenberg film I have seen at the cinema in as many weeks, having seen The Brood for the first time the previous Friday. I had not seen Scanners before either. I had though seen a clip of the exploding head shot, so knew that was coming, though it still looked quite spectacular. Sadly though, this came early on in the film, and there was never anything as visually striking as the film went on. This though feels a churlish point as there needed to be something of considerable impact for the responding attack that came to be reasonable (within the confines of the story), and for the time it was made, it was an effect that few may even have dreamed could be pulled off with such convincing aplomb.

To me the film centres around the danger of others having unedited access to our thoughts, without being able to put them though the censoring process of verbalization, and the potential destructive response from others to getting such unfiltered information. I had felt The Brood had stuck closely to what I understood the plot's focus to be about, whereas I did not feel that was done so well with Scanners, except to say that it establishes the issue, and then the rest of the film focuses upon attempts to destroy the ability to access unfiltered information by trying to destroy the Scanners. An interesting premise was set up, then built on top of this was a violet chase. Despite feeling it to not be as considered a film, I did never the less find it engaging and enjoyable.

It feels difficult to know what else to say about it, without going into plot details.

Rating: 06/10.