Beware of unmarked spoilers.
open/close all folders
Cameron Vale
Played By: Stephen Lack
The protagonist, a scanner who is recruited by ConSec to infiltrate Revok's organization.
- Anti-Hero: In the thought-provoking sense, rather than the Lovable Rogue sense. Sure, Cameron is a stone cold badass who can put his enemies into cardiac arrest without lifting a finger, but due to being Blessed with Suck, he's also just generally stone cold. He has no outside interests, no real motivation of his own, and not a whole lot of personality, being described by Kim as "barely even human." During his downtime, he simply sits in his hotel room, stares at the wall, and waits for the next plot point to happen. So yes, he's a badass, but not the sort of badass you would ever daydream about being. This makes sense, as the character was a downright Villain Protagonist in the original script. This motif of the protagonist-as-a-pawn was one that Cronenberg later returned to in Videodrome, where the manipulation is a good deal more explicitly sinister.
- Badass Longcoat: Cameron Vale seems to prefer stylish longcoats while he's able to take out an entire room full of people without lifting a finger.
- Creepy Good: Cameron Vale is a seemingly-psychopathic drifter with terrifying psychic powers who talks in a Creepy Monotone and has little-to-no personality or outside interests beyond the main plot. The basic undercurrent of his character is that he's fighting the evil psychics because it's slightly more interesting than staring at the wall.
- Creepy Monotone: Vale's voice is almost always even and robotic
- Death by Disfigurement: Subverted. It really seems like Cameron is done for after Revok inflicts massive and bloody trauma on his body in the climax and even sets him on fire, but he manages to pull off a Grand Theft Me on Revok, letting him die in his decaying body.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: The Hero (Cameron Vale) deconstructs The Chosen One: he's the only "scanner" with the power to stop Daryl Revok, he's an absolute Psychic badass ...and he is completely devoid of personality beyond his mission to stop Revok, which he has been raised to do by an (unknown to him) Evil Mentor.
- Dull Surprise: Cameron has no personality whatever, which makes Stephen Lack's performance easily mistaken for simple bad acting. He's shown a much wider range of emotion in his other acting roles.
- First-Person Peripheral Narrator: To some extent, Cameron Vale, who has literally no personality, while Darryl Revok and Dr. Ruth get much less screen time but are far more memorable and interesting.
- Grand Theft Me: In a heroic example, Revok destroys Vale's body in their final mind-duel, but Vale usurps Revok's nervous system outright and claims his opponent's body for his own — though Revok's eyes are now Vale's blue.
- Sociopathic Hero: While he's not as malicious as Revok and seems to operate on Moral Sociopathy, he nearly sends a man into a heart attack with nothing more than detached fascination.
- Unwitting Pawn: He trusts that Dr. Ruth wants what's best for scanners and goes out to infiltrate Revok's underground on his orders, but Ruth is really using him for his own hidden plans.
Darryl Revok
Played By: Michael Ironside
A rogue scanner and terrorist cult leader who is plotting for world domination.
- Ax-Crazy: One of the most homicidal Scanners as well as one of the strongest. He will murder you in a gory fashion if you threaten his operation. Or if you turn down his offers. Or just to prove he can.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Revok is seen wearing three-piece suits a few times in the film.
- Baritoneof Strength: Revok has Michael Ironside using his naturally deep and commanding voice, demonstrating his power.
- Berserk Button: Revok hates being compared to Dr. Ruth. Makes sense considering Ruth is his and Cameron's father and abandoned them both.
- Big Bad: Revok is the leader of the scanner underground movement and is plotting to take over all of society, and ultimately has to be stopped by Cameron.
- Book Ends: Revok's first and last scene have him engage in a gruesome psychic duel with another Scanner. He's not as lucky the second time.
- Cain and Abel: The leader of the villainous, rogue scanner faction and the older brother to the protagonist Cameron Vale.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: While he's enraged at the abuse of his father, Revok is reluctant to have him killed and admits to Cameron he never meant to hurt him. Tellingly, when Cameron switches bodies with him, Revok seems to go from shrieking in pain and rage to calming down as he dies in his brother's body.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Revok attempts to forcefully take his brother's body, but unfortunately for him Vale has grown strong enough to overpower and take over his own mind. Revok dies in the body of the man he bloodily ravaged. His awesome Psychic Powers were what destroyed him.
- Hypocrite: For all that he claims to hate humans, Revok is personally responsible for the deaths of every scanner in the entire film- without exception - either murdering them outright or else sending them to murder other scanners and getting them killed by Vale. This ultimately includes himself. Incidentally, that guy at the beginning of the movie with the 'splodey head? Yep, that was also a scanner. One could be forgiven for thinking Revok was actually a human supremacist out to murder all scanners, because that's pretty much all that he accomplishes.
- Join or Die: Revok wants a Scanner army, but if you're a Scanner who wants no part of it, he'll terminate you. And he nearly succeeds in wiping out Kim's heroic faction.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Revok is the leader of his renegade faction and is one of the most powerful scanners around. This is because both he and the hero were the first products of Ephemerol.
- Red Right Hand: Revok's scar. Notably, it's gone after Cameron switches bodies with him.
- Smug Super: Darryl Revok is genuinely evil, and thinks that his psychic powers mean he should Take Over the World. However, he does have a significant Freudian Excuse and has largely become what he is because of his abusive father—Dr. Paul Ruth.
- Scars Are Forever: Revok has a scar on his forehead from a past attempt to let "the voices" out of his head. Subverted at the end, when the scar's disappearance offers visible proof that Cameron has ousted Revok from his own brain and taken up occupancy.
- Super Supremacist: He's a terrorist cult leader and the result of a Bizarre Baby Boom that produced telepathic children known as "scanners." His own plot is to reproduce this previous accident by design, then train the next generation to be his foot soldiers on the path to creating a worldwide scanner supremacy. He also dismisses Obrist and her neutral group as a "band of cripples" to justify their murder.
- Villainous Valor: Revok plots a daring infiltration of and escape from the ConSec headquarters to assassinate their last scanner. As the head of a major scanner underground he could have sent in underlings, but he decided This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself. Also, toward the end of the movie, it's The Hero who pulls the "Not So Different" Remark instead of the villain.
- Visionary Villain: Believing scanners are bound to be oppressed by humanity, Revok aims to create a new world order where they may be free of companies like ConSec.
- We Can Rule Together: Revok really wants to build his scanner empire with his brother by his side, and the latter's refusal to do so is seen by him as a betrayal.
- Wicked Cultured: A moderate example. Revok has a nice, tasteful office with some interesting modern art, where he is seen drinking Scotch toward the end.
- With Us or Against Us: He doesn't tolerate any other scanners who aren't a part of his underground network. Every scanner known to Ruth who was approached by Revok was either recruited, or murdered. His goons murder most of Kim's people.
- Woobie Destroyerof Worlds: As we learn more of Darryl Revok's backstory, it becomes increasingly apparent that he became a psychic supremacist with ambitions of world conquest due to all the abuse he suffered because of his supernatural abilities. He transformed his inferiority complex into a superiority complex to cope with being called a freak and locked up in a mental asylum for years, as pointed out by Dr. Paul Ruth:Dr. Ruth: At the age of 22 he was extremely self-destructive; now at the age of 35 he is simply destructive.
- Your Head A-Splode: Quite memorably inflicts this on a poor fellow Scanner in his introduction.
Dr. Paul Ruth
Played By: Patrick McGoohan
A psychopharmacist and specialist in the scanner phenomenon who works for ConSec.
- Abusive Parents: Even after using his wife and sons as a Guinea Pig Family, he abandons and distances himself from both of them, only re-establishing contact with Cameron in a calculated move to use him as a weapon.
- Create Your Own Villain: Ruth is largely responsible for turning Revok into an evil scanner in the first place. He inadvertently gave his children psychic powers by experimenting on his own family with untested drugs, and subsequently abandoned both his children. Ruth let Revok be locked up in an insane asylum rather than help him, which caused Revok to develop a supremacist complex and a desire to see scanners rule the world. The plot starts as Ruth tries to use Cameron, the other child he rejected, as a weapon against Revok.
- Guinea Pig Family: Dr. Ruth's great crime was to experiment on his own pregnant wife, mutating both of his sons into scanners.
- He Knows Too Much: Keller murders him on Revok's orders after Ruth learns about the RIPE program.
- Mad Scientist: He inadvertently created hundreds of children with psychic powers through his medical experiments, then dedicated the rest of his life to weaponizing them for his new employers.
- Treacherous Advisor: Ruth presents himself as some sort of benevolent mentor figure who wants to teach Cameron how to harness his psychic abilities for the betterment of his kind, when in fact Ruth is actually a Mad Scientist and Abusive Parent who is simply using Cameron to eliminate an outside threat to his employers.
- Wise Old Folk Façade: Ruth uses the "benevolent old grandfather" look to his advantage. Cameron trusts him implicitly and tries to infiltrate Revok's organization on his orders, but Ruth's actual motive is to weaponize his younger son against his older one, both of whom are psychic in the first place because of him.
Kim Obrist
Played By: Jennifer O'Neill
The leader of a group of good scanners.
- Damsel out of Distress: When Keller attempt to murder Kim during her interogation at ConSec, she is able to defend herself because Dr. Ruth had replaced the shot of Ephemerol administered to her and Cameron with a placebo.
- The Not-Love Interest: There's never a hint of romance between hero Cameron Vale and his ally Kim Obrist, because they're too busy fighting for their lives to fall in love. Also, Cameron is terrifying and emotionally stunted because of his psychic affliction, while Kim seems to be coping a lot better with her own powers.
- Master of Illusion: Obrist briefly causes a security guard to collapse in tears by appearing to be his mother.
- Mystical White Hair: She has a prominent streak of grey hair and has psychic powers.
- Neutrality Backlash: Kim and her group of fellow scanners have chosen to remain neutral in the war between Revok and ConSec. This results in the murder of all but Kim at the hands of Revok's men, since Revok doesn't allow for independent scanners.
Braedon Keller
Played By: Lawrence Dane
The new chief of internal security at ConSec.
- Bad Boss: He tries to force a team of technicians to execute Vale through shutting down the communications line he's scanning. When one of them points out the risks, Keller pulls a gun on the man to make him do it. Naturally this gets him and everyone else in the room killed by the psychic backlash.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Not the CEO but a ranking board member of ConSec, specifically the security chief, Keller uses his position to try and help create a scanner army to conquer the world so he can enjoy a position of power.
- The Dragon: Secretly Revok's mole in ConSec, Keller provides his boss with the clearance to commit terrorist attacks and resources to run his program to mass produce scanners. He's also Cameron's penultimate opponent before he can face his brother.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: He is blown up with his own computer when he tries to kill Cameron.
- The Mole: He is working with Revok from within ConSec. Revok notes that Keller "saw the future", but he's apparently motivated purely by personal gain. He may have even had a hand in the assassination of his immediate predecessor, since he's apparently been working with Revok for quite some time before his introduction.
- More Despicable Minion: Lacking Revok's Dark and Troubled Past, Keller also has to actually be held back from killing Revok's father, Dr. Ruth, and happily tries to violently kill his brother Cameron, against Revok's wishes.
- Properly Paranoid: When he tries to kill Vale by purging the ConSec computers, he takes several steps back despite the technicians assuring him that there's nothing to be worried about. He's right to be concerned, as Vale causes some Explosive Instrumentation, but even Keller underestimated Vale's power.
- The Quisling: Keller knows how powerful scanners are and seeks to help Revok for the security of being in his good graces when his violent plot goes through, happily selling out all of humanity.
Benjamin Pierce
Played By: Robert Silverman
A reclusive scanner who once tried to kill his entire family.
- Enfant Terrible: He was only 10 when he tried to murder his father, mother, and sister.
- Mad Artist: Inverted; he admits that his art keeps him sane. Well, sane-ish. Although his art is pretty friggin' weird.
- Reclusive Artist: Benjamin Pierce is an artist who lives alone in a secluded barn to make his artwork. As a psychic pariah he outright refuses to see his public.
- Self-Made Orphan: He tried to kill his family in his backstory.
Trevelyan
Played By: Mavor Moore
The head of the board of directors of ConSec.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Mr. Trevelyan, chairman of the ConSec board, seems to be a fairly responsible guy, giving Dr. Ruth a reasonable amount of leeway to deal with the Revok menace.
