Scanners

Scanners. Individuals with abnormal synapses, capable of penetrating other people’s minds. Child prodigies and monstrous outsiders posing danger to themselves as well as others. One of them, Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), a crazed vagrant, is recruited by the ConSec corporation to stop a powerful and malevolent telepath, Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside). David Cronenberg’s sci-fi thriller demonstrates what the X-Men film series might have looked like had it been created by filmmakers of a different calibre. The Canadian auteur delivers the comic-book-inspired storyline in his trademark style – with scientific rigour and bloody candour. The scene with a head exploding under telepathic pressure, a masterpiece of gore effects, is already iconic. It also serves to illustrate Cronenberg’s artistic stance, who, like one of his scanners, would like to blow up his audience’s brains.

Piotr Mirski

David Cronenberg (b.1943) is a Canadian director and screenwriter. His early works, including Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977) and The Brood (1979), earned him the moniker King of Venereal Horror. His later films include successful forays into sci-fi, and in the latter half of the 1980s he began expanding the genres he worked with. An important theme in his work is the influence of modern civilization on the mind and the body.