Scanners II: A Força do Poder

Scanners II was released in the late 80's or early 90's, it was one of the last true low budget horror films before my town turned into big budget studio depot for films. Scanners II is both visually stunning with some great opening shots of Montreal and has a great comic book style plot. Yeah sure the connection to the first Scanners was kinda cheesy in execution, but this film is alot faster in pace and has more action than the very slow paced Scanners. The FX by Mike Smithson are great and very realistic before our dependence to all that is CGI. But overall the performances are good but nothing to write home about. Overall Scanners II has good cinematography and a clever little story of world domination to entertain fans as well as the casual viewer. I suggest to anyone to check it out and be totally entertained for 100 minutes.

Although the first sequel does not have an intriguing and thought-provoking script like the original, it does improve in other areas. The movie is slickly made on a low budget, making it look better than the first. It's fast-paced, and the "scanner" sequences are well-staged and deliver a good amount of blood and guts.

"Scanners II: The New Order" is about as decent a sequel as we could have gotten to David Cronenbergs' "Scanners". There are some good ideas in the screenplay by B. J. Nelson ("Lone Wolf McQuade"), and the story is watchable enough. Director Christian Duguay is no Cronenberg, but he's not a slouch either, giving the proceedings a flashy beginning and an acceptable pace.

David Hewlett ('Stargate: Atlantis', "Rise of the Planet of the Apes") stars as David Kellum, an ordinary young man who learns that he has "scanning" abilities. A power crazed police detective named John Forrester (Yvan Ponton), in collaboration with unscrupulous scientists, is determined to corral Scanners like David, corrupt them, and use them to his own advantage.

The dialogue isn't always that great, and neither are some of the performances, but there's enough pizazz here to make this an acceptable viewing. Of course, this being a "Scanners" film, we expect and crave at least one good exploding head shot, and we get it, but we have to wait a pretty long time before that happens. The makeup effects are generally pulled off well, the filmmaking fairly slick looking.

Hewlett is okay as the hero. Lovely Deborah Raffin is the token American "name", and doesn't show up until well into the story. Isabelle Mejias is sexy and appealing as the heros' love interest. Tom Butler plays the nefarious Dr. Morse; Vlasta Vrana is the crooked Lt. Gelson. Raoul Trujillo has more fun than anybody as the wild eyed Peter Drak, who causes the chaos that opens the film.

This viewer had a good enough time with this one. Fans of the Cronenberg original may like it as well.

Six out of 10.

During a sweeping crimewave, a war is fought for the streets.

I'm not going to obsess over how inferior this is to the original movie. As much as I love that one, I never thought that it needed sequels. So I think an argument could be made that this needed to justify that connection. And it is not up to the task. The writing is beyond convenient, with illogical decisions made, awkward dialogue where two people say things to each other that they already both know for the audience's benefit, and essentially all of the moral ambiguity that made the first one so compelling, completely gone. Cronenberg sought to explore how it might affect someone's life to be born with psychic powers. This was made by people who wanted heads to go boom.

If you have realistic expectations, this one can be fun. It is aggressively average, and as such could be significantly worse. Director Christian Duguay got a lot better after this, but even here, he manages to make the material work better than you might think. The actors portraying the villains really get into their roles and are fun to watch. The effects are good and spread out well.

This features bloody gory disturbing violence. I recommend this to people who wanted more after watching the first one. 5/10.

Nothing can match the brilliance of David Cronenberg's original Scanners, but this first sequel does a good job of coming close.

The plot is essentially the same. Nice guy scanner doesn't understand his powers, hones his abilities, and eventually enters into a scanning war with an evil scanner. Some details are changed here and there, such as the police chief who wants to use scanners to accomplish a radical new shift in local government, and the long lost sister of the nice guy scanner that enables the hero to "possess" a target as opposed to scan him to death.

Scanners 2, like the original, has a reputation for being terribly gory. In reality, there are only two scenes of true gore, (an exploding head, and a spurting tumor on the back of a criminal's neck) but plenty of people flung against walls from unseen mental forces. A few folks end up with deformed faces, but no blood. The final climactic battle is very toned down, and results only in a burned-out corpse shown briefly.

The plot does have some references to the protagonists from the original film, but it is not necessary to see the first movie before seeing this one.