Scanners II: The New Order (1991)

Decent Story. Sufficient Budget. Poor Execution, Acting, FX. Super Boring and Zero Atmosphere.Incredibly Boring. Acting sucks. There was a story and budget. Very poorly executed. Just a bad movie.Decent Story. Sufficient Budget. Poor Execution, Acting, FX. Super Boring and Zero Atmosphere.Incredibly Boring. Acting sucks. There was a story and budget. Very poorly executed. Just a bad movie.Decent Story. Sufficient Budget. Poor Execution, Acting, FX. Super Boring and Zero Atmosphere. Incredibly Boring. Acting sucks. There was a story and budget. Very poorly executed. Just a bad movie.

"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.

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.

As B movies go, it was well above average (I warn the reader now that I may reveal certain key elements of the plot or other parts of the movie, although I am trying to minimise any such tendency). As sequels usually go, it was utterly fantastic(despite a "cookie cutter" approach to trying to copy certain elements from the original movie verbatum. Despite this sometimes tedious tendency, it seemed to work in this particular film, so long as the viewer could divorce his attention from comparisons to the original "Scanners").The movie was similar in ways to the "Superman" series, in terms of the main character's description of his early childhood and relationship with his parents (who seemed modelled along the same lines as the Kents in the "Superman" stories) and the theme of a morally pure hero possessed of extraordinary powers from an early age, etc. The depiction of profound feelings of alienation of prodigious or otherwise non-conforming children, adolescents and/or adults was a theme which reminded me of films such as "Real Genius", and (to a more superficial degree) "Doctor Mordrid" and struck a particularly strong chord.The film had a positive message, and was fun to watch. I found some of the insights and accuracy (in terms of depiction of certain aspects of paranormal experiences) fascinating, and even profoundly touching at times. These moments occasionally appeared from among all of the great formula-driven schlock and gratuitous sex(uality, in this case, as the sexual elements were tastefully done) and violence that makes B movies (or Shakespearian plays, for that matter!) so much fun to watch!This is a must watch for all comic book, Sci-fi, "remote viewing" enthusiasts, and horror fans! With the right exposure in the right circles, the film could develop quite a cult following, along with the original "Scanners".