B- | A telepath is recruited by a defense contractor to find a rogue telepath. Directed by David Cronenberg Starring Stephen Lack, Michael Ironside, and Patrick McGoohan Review by Jon Kissel |
I once attended a lecture about South Korea exporting its culture under the assumption that it was going to be about the gonzo, transgressive films of Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. Instead, the lecturer discussed K-pop and its unique brand of manufactured wholesomeness, a phrase totally unfamiliar to fans of Oldboy and Memories of Murder. Of course, as great as those films are, K-pop has a much wider appeal and dominates the global interpretation of South Korean culture, and I, not being a fan, am a narrow-minded fool who thinks everyone interprets culture the same way I do. It’s like if all I knew of Canada were the films of favored canuck son David Cronenberg, and expected every Canadian to have an opinion on which of the dozens of fleshy vestigial appendages in his films were their favorite (Videodrome stomach or Dead Ringers connecting tissue for me). For all of Canada’s stereotypical courtesy and niceness, Cronenberg has been his own stalwart maple tree, pumping out acidic, dystopian sap for five decades with no signs of tapping out. Scanners fits squarely within his early career, where Cronenberg is still figuring his formula out and putting the pieces together. It’s not yet the total package of body horror, corporate satire, and taboo behavior that he’ll hit on shortly after Scanners, but here, things are coming together for this cinematic master even as he’s blasting prop heads apart.
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