I’ve never been on an acid trip, but I would think this movie is a lot like one.

A Scanner Darkly is a little different than what you may be used to. It’s not exactly an animated feature and it’s not exactly a live-action movie. It’s more like a hybrid of the two. Think of a moving comic strip with regular people as characters telling an ‘R’ rated story. It’s hard to explain, so just look at the picture to your right.

If you ask me, this movie didn’t need to be cinematically inventive to be as good as it was. A Scanner Darkly is a story about an overwhelming drug epidemic that occurs in the not-too-distant future, specifically six years from now. Bob Arctor (played by Keanu Reeves) is an Orange County cop under deep cover trying to discover who is responsible for the new ‘it’ drug only known as ‘Substance D’. He and his bosses seem to stop at nothing to end what is going to eventually destroy America, using deception and sacrifice as their tools.

This visually stunning piece of motion picture art uses animation to help tell the story of drug addiction in a way no other movie has since Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. It gives us a chance to experience the affects of ‘Substance D’ as Bob Arctor does, without the pesky paranoia and nausea. Things such as confusion, delusion, flashbacks, and hallucinations drive the story forward while at the same time keeping you in the dark to what really is going on. I feel this movie is very entertaining and definitely worth renting/buying. There is currently nothing out there like it.