20 Best Sci-Fi Films Of The 21st Century

15. A Scanner Darkly

Sunshine Close Up
Warner Independent Pictures

Our second entry on this list to be based on the works of the godfather of paranoid, drugged out science fiction Philip K. Dick.

The first thing that everyone notices about A Scanner Darkly is, obviously, the whole aesthetic of the film. Director Richard Linklater opted to use rotoscoping in the film - a technique wherein each individual frame is traced over after filming. The semi-live, semi-animated style lends perfectly to the hallucinatory, paranoid tone of the film.

The cast are perfect too. Keanu Reeves really sells it as "Fred", an undercover cop whose brain is slowly degrading and succumbing to his constant drug abuse and Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. are perfectly scummy as "Fred's" waster, drug addict housemates and "friends". Downey Jr. in particular plays Barris perfectly as a truly manipulative, self-serving piece of garbage - with him clearly tapping into his own experiences with addiction.

This isn't just a great sci-fi film, but also a poignant potrayal of addiction and the damage it wreaks, much of it based upon Dick's own experiences with amphetamine addiction. This is essential.

Also, it has 69% on Rotten Tomatoes. So...nice.

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Johnny sat by the fire, idly swirling his brandy, flicking through the pages of War and Peace, wondering whether it was pretentious to write his bio in the third person.