20 years ago today, Richard Linklater’s adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel began its wide theatrical release run. An ambitious animated movie using live action actors, it’s almost a miracle it got made at all. On 28th July 2006, A Scanner Darkly hit movie screens around the world.

Philip K. Dick’s original novel, A Scanner Darkly, didn’t start life as a science fiction story, but concerned it wouldn’t be commercial enough in its original form, he added science fiction elements. What it really is is an anti-drug story, based on Philip K. Dick’s experiences with drugs, and the friends he lost to them. Because of this, it’s clearly his most personal story, which is perhaps the reason why Richard Linklater became interested in it.

Linklater chose to shoot A Scanner Darkly in live action, and then use rotoscoped animation, which he had previously used for his 2001 film Waking Life, and which was perhaps most famously used for Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated The Lord of the Rings. Quite why Linklater chose to make the movie this way is open to speculation. It is a long and expensive process, requiring a large team of animators to take the original live action footage and animate elements. This meant the project went way over budget, and dragged on far beyond the expected post-production schedule. With the live action footage available, it’s perhaps surprising that the studio execs didn’t at any point take the opportunity to wrench control of the project and put it out as a live action movie instead.

So does the animated effect work? A Scanner Darkly is a movie about an undercover cop, Keanu Reeves’ Bob Arctor, who is living in a house with drug addled housemates, as he attempts to discover the origin of a dangerous drug called Substance D. In order to effectively work undercover, he must join them in the use of the drug. In the process, however, he begins to lose sight of who he really is. Or, are his memories of his ‘real’ life just hallucinations caused by the drug use? As his grasp on reality slips away, both the protagonist and the audience find themselves questioning what the real story is.

For a movie with drug-addled characters disoriented by constant bad trips, the animated style contributes greatly to the atmosphere of confusion. It enables Linklater to smoothly integrate the more unnatural visual elements into the movie – both the story and the animation have a hallucinatory quality, which feeds perfectly into the themes of the movie. Reeves’ famous monologue from the movie, ‘What does a scanner see? Into the head? Clearly or darkly?’ We’re not sure ourselves, because the animation means we’re not able to easily discern what is real, and what is illusion.

Is A Scanner Darkly actually a sci-fi dystopia movie, though? It was sold as such by Dick, but aside from the scramble suit, he was seeing only 15 minutes into the future. And that vision was our current, real world dystopia. The war on drugs, the surveillance state, corporations playing both sides, we’re well into that world. Well past it in fact.

The question on whether A Scanner Darkly is an entertaining movie is much harder to answer, as it’s going to differ from everyone. It starts as a fun, counter-culture drug movie, but as it becomes obvious the paranoia of the characters’ conspiracy theories isn’t unfounded, the movie becomes a lot darker. The cast of A Scanner Darkly really offers the stoner nature of the movie a real authenticity, and it’s testament to Linklater’s vision that such a talented cast wanted to do it, even though they all had good reason not to. Woody Harrelson being typecast, again, as a stoner. The same goes for Reeves, who had just started getting away from those roles. Winona Ryder had had issues with drugs, and Robert Downey Jr. must have surely wanted the world to forget his. Yet they all took on the roles anyway, and played them perfectly. This is possibly Keanu Reeves best acting performance, expertly selling the sad story of a man who loses everything, including his mind and soul. It’s a highly effective anti-drug story, showing how it’s all fun and games, until it isn’t.

A Scanner Darkly maybe isn’t cyberpunk, and it maybe isn’t even dystopia, but it is a little miracle of a film, underrated, important, and effective. We recommend giving it a watch, if you haven’t already.