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This means that when Arctor is at home, he spends hours watching his roommates get wasted and tinker with firearms. And when he's at work, he gets to do the same thing, behind a computer monitor. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a potentially funny story. And, once or twice, it is. But while it's fun to imagine this as Douglas Adams style social satire, it's instead what you might get if Terry Gilliam went to work for Pixar. The animation involved a team of artists literally painting over the film, and the effect is strangely hypnotic. It feels a little gimmicky, since I have a hard time thinking of a reason for it other than the fact that everyone is on drugs, and it looks trippy. If the film had an identifiable theme, it might tie together a little neatly, but it’s hard to tell what this story wants me to think about.

Is this about the futility of using drugs to dull the pain of a meaningless existence? Is it a cautionary tale about removing the unspoken bonds of civil trust that hold society together? Is it an ironic joke about how the larger the government gets, the less it has to govern because it’s easier to just force people to do things? Or, is this just a thinly veiled Philip K Dick autobiography of sorts, as is suggested by the closing titles? Maybe it’s about how having roommates sucks. Maybe it’s all of these things. Virtually everyone in this movie is portrayed as a victim, or in the case of the government, bureaucratic opportunists who take action for its own sake, without establishing clear goals. It’s definitely realistic in that regard, but it’s confusing to figure out the broader meaning of the film.

Richard Linklater is one of those directors who excels at capturing the essence of casual conversation, so there isn’t a moment of this film that isn’t in some way interesting. The story touches on a lot of things, but it’s in the same way a coke fiend can’t stay on one subject for more than 10 seconds. A Scanner Darkly flits from one idea to another like a spastic moth, never settling on anything or giving you a chance to figure out what’s happening. There’s an interesting twist at the end, but it feels implausible enough to displace any real feeling of satisfaction. Is the idea that we’re all victims? That society is too far gone to be saved, and we’re all just swirling down the drain together in unison? Is it that drugs are bad, mmmmkay?

The only message I can clearly identify here is that everyone is somebody’s bitch, and that’s just the sort of cynical sentiment I can see coming out of Philip K Dick. In fact, it’s a conversation I literally just had with my boss the other day, so it appears that as usual, Philip K. Dick has correctly predicted the dystopian hell fast approaching over the horizon. Or, maybe he just predicted Sad Keanu. Either way, A Scanner Darkly is a strange, mesmerizing film that you will probably never understand OR forget.

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