I’ve Got a Headache this Big

David Cronnenberg makes weird movies. I don’t really think that’s a fact in dispute, but it is worth reiterating that the writer / director has made a career out of making films that disgust and delight horror viewers. We’ve already discussed one of his best, and grossest films, The Fly, which shocked and delighted gorehounds back in 1986, becoming his most successful film up to that point. But the director had been working for years before the release of that film, creating disturbing, interesting, disgusting body horror cinema up in Canada. And one film that got him real attention was 1981’s Scanners.

For most video viewers, if you know Scanners it’s because of the famous scene where one dude makes another dude’s head explode just with the power of his mind. That shocking moment sets the stage for a very weird sci-fi film to come, and it promises more shocking moments for the future. Arguably nothing in the film has quite the same impact (especially to heads) as that one moment, but it does grab your attention and keep you invested in the film. If nothing else, Cronnenberg knows how to capture the attention of his viewers.

When ConSec, a private military firm, is attacked from within by a “Scanner”, a person with the ability to read minds and, apparently, do even worse things to their targets, the leadership at the film decides they need to strike back. They need their own Scanner, someone they can train up to use as an agent to go after the malicious Scanner targeting their business. That evil Scanner is Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), a man building his own private army of Scanners, and to combat him, ConSec brings in newly discovered Scanner Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) to hunt Revok down.

Under the tutelage of ConSec pharmacologist Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan), Vale is trained to use his Scanner powers and harness his potential. Given the drug ephemerol, a ConSec-developed compound that eases the side effects of Scanner abilities (such as being able to hear everyone’s inner thoughts and not being able to block them out), David becomes a functional and skilled agent for Ruth. He heads out, following a series of clues, to try and track down Revok, all while becoming more enmeshed in Scanner culture. He meets Kim Obrist (Jennifer O'Neill), a woman with her own community of Scanners, and they discover just how powerful Scanners can be working together. But Revok doesn’t want anyone getting in the way of his plans, and he’ll kill anyone, even Scanners, that look like they’re going to be a problem for his new Scanner army. It’s Scanner versus Scanner for the fate of humanity.

Scanners is a film that works on its moments. Any time the Scanners bring out their powers, focusing on targets and harnessing their abilities, the film finds its energy. These sequences have tension, with the director’s focus, alongside a creepy soundtrack, really building to key moments of power (and, often, gore). The film thrives when it can let its Scanners unleash and do cool things with their mind… but it also tends to become meandering and kind of formless when it can’t bust out these exciting moments.

Part of the problem is that the story itself kind of lurches and leaps without much context. While it’s nice when a film doesn’t have to explain itself to the audience, doing long exposition dumps to keep the story going, at the same time some context and explanation does help. Cameron is sent on his quest and then, just randomly, gets this clue or that name to follow up on, going on a fetch quest where we see half the information and even fewer clues. Stuff just kind of happens and then the film moves to the next key sequence so that something can get explained, maybe, eventually. It’s not a cohesive story, just a series of scenes.

And even then, the film can’t help but do an exposition dump at the end, forcibly having to explain its whole story just so we can understand what it is we watched for the last two acts. All of the random scenes, all of the obfuscated information, suddenly comes out in one long dump between hero and villain, and, gotta say, it just doesn’t work. Suddenly the film is making connections and explaining backstory, while the momentum of the movie completely stops. And, frankly, none of this information had to be obfuscated. It all could have been dribbled out slowly, explaining the film in key lines while we were watching it, and it would have made everything feel more cohesive and like it was moving at a better clip.

That exposition dump, meanwhile, actually somehow makes the movie make less sense, not more. The story that’s actually given to us seemingly contradicts things we know about the characters and moments that we’ve seen play out in the film. No, the villain doesn’t want our hero dead even though, on multiple occasions, he’s had his goons go out of their way to try and kill Cameron. Oh, there’s actually a connection between the hero and the villain even though it doesn’t make logical sense and it requires a whole lot of technobabble just to explain itself. Is any of it necessary? Not in the slightest, and all of this explaining and retconning actually ruins what we saw before.

Maybe all of this could have worked if the acting were better, but most of the people in the film don’t have the skill to keep up with the material. Stephen Lack seems lost as Cameron Vale, playing every scene with the same blank, dull expression. Kim Obrist is only slightly better as Jennifer O'Neill. She at least has some emotion. It’s muted, but it’s there. I assume some of this was the direction from Cronnenberg, but even then, the total lack of feeling is also an acting choice and these two, as our leads, just don’t bring it.

The actor that actually does bring big energy is Michael Ironside, although that’s to be expected as he’s a fantastic character actor who absolutely kills it in every performance. He gets pretty hammy in places in this film, and I wouldn’t call this one of his better performances, but in comparison to everyone around him, it’s nice to see someone chewing the scenery and adding some life to these characters. If we could have had more of this I probably wouldn’t have been picking apart the story as much as I was.

But then a good new battle happens and it’s hard to say that any of it really matters. Scanners is a film that’s absolutely in love with its bland story and weak characters, but when it comes time to explode a head or set a man on fire with the power of a mind, everything else falls away and the film becomes interesting. There are great moments that very nearly carry the movie, and at those times I was sitting up at attention, ready for whatever craziness came next. It’s just sad that these moments are in a film that’s pretty dry and airless otherwise.

Cronnenberg is a solid director that can, at times, give us lively, investing films. Scanners is not one of them. It’s an interesting movie, an at times artly directed gorefest. But I wouldn’t call it good, not once you go back and watch the whole thing around those perfect horror moments. The film is famous for a few key scenes, but everything else in the film is really just filler.