A Scanner Darkly (2006) on Netflix

R20061h 40mAnimation Sci-Fi Thriller

In a near-future United States, the hallucinogen Substance D has taken hold. Undercover agent Bob Arctor infiltrates the drug's supply chain and buys from Donna, who turns down his advances.

Netflix3.1/5
IMDb7.0/10122,578 votes
Rotten Tomatoes68%

Trailer

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Plot summary

The war on drugs has been lost in the United States, and a hallucinogen called Substance D has spread across the country. The government relies on an invasive high-tech surveillance system and on officers and informants working undercover. Bob Arctor goes undercover, moving through the drug's underworld to reach its supply chain. At the police station he wears a scramble suit that constantly changes his appearance and voice, and there he answers only to the code name Fred. His housemates, Luckman and Barris, take the drug with him. Arctor buys Substance D from Donna and hopes that a large enough order will lead her to take him to whoever supplies her. Fred's senior officer, Hank, orders more surveillance of Arctor and the people around him.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Scanner Darkly (2006)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

In January 2005, while Sabiston and his four-person core team were strategizing at a local cafe, Pallotta changed the locks and seized their workstations, replacing them with two local artists, Jason Archer and Paul Beck.
Robert Downey Jr. prepared for his role by writing out all his dialogue in run-on sentences, studying them, and then converting the text into acronyms to memorize it.
Richard Linklater first toyed with adapting a different Philip K. Dick novel, Ubik, but stopped early on because he was unable to obtain the rights and, in his own words, "couldn't quite crack it".
Philip K. Dick's daughters were not too keen on "a cartoon version" of A Scanner Darkly; after the high-profile adaptations of Minority Report and Paycheck they had taken a more proactive role in evaluating every film proposal, including unusual projects like Linklater's.
The studio increased the budget of the animated adaptation from $6.7 million to $8.7 million and gave Richard Linklater a further six months to finish the film.
The film uses clips of four Radiohead songs, among them "Fog" and "The Amazing Sounds of Orgy", plus Thom Yorke's solo track "Black Swan", and an early test screening of it featured an all-Radiohead soundtrack.