A Scanner Darkly. Based on the novel by Philip K. Dick, the film tells of the war on drugs in the North America of the near future. Every citizen’s life is under surveillance, on the grounds of combating a drug known as M. A secret policeman goes undercover to unearth the narcotic’s distribution networks, but his a sense of good and evil and reality itself begin to shift. One of the most appealing features of the movie is its use of rotoscopic animation.