Telepathy has been the subject of many stories, mostly in paranormal, horror, and thriller genres. But it hardly ever received the kind of fandom in the sci-fi cinema likely because of the difficulty in visual depiction of the phenomenon of telepathic transmission. David Cronenberg tried to change it by making Scanners (1981), an effort that left a trail of success.
In this intriguing tale of telepathically gifted individuals, called scanners (for their ability to scan the mind/thoughts of another person), Cameron Vale and Darryl Revok are two faces of the same coin – Vale as the good scanner trying to stop evil against Revok, who is the power-hungry scanner with his eyes set on world domination. In this struggle, Vale needs to protect fellow scanner Kim Obrist (Jennifer O’Neill) while he is guided by Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan), an expert in the field.
Scanners is more of a thriller than a sci-fi action film. Thematically, it runs counter to Barry Levinson’s Sphere (1998) in its approach to the depiction of the human mind. Whereas Sphere reveals the power of subconscious fear as the dominant emotion of the mental realm, Scanners shows the mind’s power. The difference of course is that Sphere deals with “normal” minds while Scanners picks prodigious ones.
Though Steven Lack plays the protagonist Cameron Vale, Scanners has to be better remembered for Michael Ironside who nailed it as Darryl Revok. If revealing the ending wasn’t such a deadly sin (spoiler) in the screen realm, it would have been easier to praise Ironside’s powerful delivery in the climax scene. But left to the audience entirely!
It’s fair to mention some notable flaws with the plot and characterization, most conspicuous of those being the incomplete story of the professor abandoning his kids and their stories of growing up to become who they are in the present day. Filling these voids would have made Scanners a more polished gem. Regardless, it remains a movie not to miss if one’s a sci-fi fan.
