A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly (2006) is Richard Linklater's science-fiction thriller you can watch online on iFILM. In a near-future Orange County, a drug called Substance D quietly eats away at the minds of everyone who takes it.

Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover narcotics agent who has gone so deep that he's now hooked himself. His handlers order him to surveil his own circle of burnouts: the fast-talking James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), perpetually stoned Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson), Donna (Winona Ryder) and twitchy Charles Freck. The catch is brutal. The target he's assigned to watch turns out to be himself, and Substance D has split his brain into two halves that no longer recognize each other.

Adapted from Philip K. Dick's novel, the film was shot live and then painted over frame by frame with rotoscope animation, giving every surface a restless, shifting shimmer. Dick wrote the story for friends he lost to addiction, and the closing credits name them one by one. Stream A Scanner Darkly (2006) online on iFILM.