30 Animated Movies That Are Not for Children

Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novels have long provided fertile material for filmmakers, most famously with Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (adapted from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), but some of them haven’t achieved this kind of status, despite being cinematic events in their own right.

Enter A Scanner Darkly, directed by Richard Linklater and set seven years in the future (now 12 years in the past), in an America where high-tech surveillance watches over everyone 24/7, government agents use scramble suits to mask their identities, and the hallucinogenic drug Substance B is on everyone’s minds. Needless to say, paranoia and suspicion are the orders of the day, and Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is knee-deep in it all, not knowing whether he is really a junkie, an agent, or a mole.

Taking the rotoscoping approach that Linklater used on Waking Life, but refining it into one coherent and cohesive style, the director filmed Scanner Darkly with live actors first before putting it through rigorous post-processing to turn it into animation. The result is more than the movie on its own could ever have been, perfectly capturing the hallucinogenic textures of the world Dick created in a fluid reality that is always shifting, changing, vibrating, and keeping us guessing. Plus, it's got Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson, and Winona Ryder giving it their all - and few animations can say that.