David Cronenberg, as a director, had a reputation in the early part of his career for weird gore that, for the most part, kept me away from his work. I have seen both Eastern Promises and A History of Violence, but even those movies show a director with a knack for gruesome and unflinching violence. But, these days, I am all about filling in my gaps, and since HBO currently has Cronenberg’s Scanners on its service, I figured now would be as good a time as any to fill that hole.

Besides, this is the one that famously featured a man’s head exploding. Doesn’t that more or less guarantee I should see this one?

Scanners takes place in a world where people known as “scanners” exist. These people have a variety of psychic powers, mostly in the form of mind reading and in the stronger ones, mind control. The movie opens with Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), a homeless man who seems to inadvertently give a woman a seizure at the local mall. He’s taken into the custody of ConSec, particularly in the form of one Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan). Dr. Ruth is, ostensibly, there to train Cameron to use his powers for the better. On the other hand is Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), a powerful scanner who seems to be out to either recruit or murder every scanner he can. Revok has plans, deep plans, involving a war on normal people. He also, presumably, does not know about Cameron. Can Ruth trust the new guy to take down a man who can make a head explode?

As it is, beyond the exploding head, this isn’t a particularly gory or violent movie, at least compared to Cronenberg’s reputation. What it is is some kind of sci-fi thriller with some horror elements. And truthfully, these days it plays more like a low budget version of an X-Men movie where people fear and hate those born different with special powers, where some of those individuals believe in ruling and the others…well, they’d just assume just live a quiet, normal life. If anything, there’s the ConSec angle, and seeing as it is some sort of private corporation, it stands to reason they aren’t up to much good either. Is Ruth a good man or not? He isn’t a scanner. He’s a scientist studying them. And the movie does save some last minute revelations about him and his connections to both Revok and Cameron that shed some light on how benevolent he may or may not be.

That said, Cameron is a benevolent figure, looking to stop Revok if nothing else. Cameron may have special powers, but he mostly wants to not hurt anybody and keep his own kind from hurting others from the looks of things, and he seems to believe in Ruth. Whether he does or not at the end of the movie is more or less immaterial, but the ideal of Ruth matters to Cameron far more than the probable reality. And I say only “probable” because the information comes from Revok, and he is the movie’s villain.

But that X-Men comparison really sticks out here. It makes it less likely to see this as the horror movie the director may have intended it to be and more like a nascent superhero flick in a genre that barely existed when Scanners came out. If nothing else, there’s a solid performance from Ironside as the villain, good effects (that exploding head still holds up pretty well), and a tense story. I may have to find some of Cronenberg’s other work…even if it is far crazier than this one ultimately turned out to be.

Grade: B


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