As you may know, I made terrible life choices, and thus somehow managed not to watch the movie "Scanners" until last year. I know, I know, it's horrible of me, but now that I've seen it I should probably watch the sequels as well, since I've been told that they're worth checking out too. I like most of the "Hellraiser" sequels, so I'm hoping that these are similarly entertaining.
This movie deals with a new generation of "scanners," people who have unique and terrifying psychic powers. We learned in the first movie that these powers are the result of a side effect of a drug prescribed to quell anxiety in expectant mothers. Fetuses exposed to the drug will be born scanners. Scanners have the power of telekenisis, can move things with their minds, and manipulate and kill others using only the power of their minds. Probably the most famous scene from the first movie shows a guy whose head explodes because of a scanner's creepy power. So of course, a politician learns of these people and their powers, and does what politicians do best, tries to gain power by manipulating the scanners to do his bidding (why don't you see how that plan worked out for the bad guy in the movie "The Fury," asshole). Another "scanner" learns of this plot and tries to stop it.
As someone who has experienced mental illness, I relate to how the scanners react to constantly having voices in their heads, ideas and flashes and powers that they can't control. It must be hell, and it's why they always seem to be tripping on drugs, acting crazily, and freaking out. It must be terrifying to have all this happening inside your head, and not even being able to control it well. You get pissed off and glare at someone, and suddenly you blow them up. Yikes. Ok yes, I know it takes more than that, but still, it would be scary having that kind of power and not knowing what you were capable of. Plus I get migraines that are bad enough, I can't even imagine how bad the headaches must be from these kinds of powers.
And there's no one really trying to teach them how to handle their powers and how to control them, except for evil guys who really just want to exploit their powers. Even the guy we meet (who seems to be functioning well in spite of his struggle with his powers) can be majorly triggered at any time. You'd think someone would have started an X-men type school for scanners or something by now.
The story in this movie is compelling, and the acting and special effects are good for a low-budget sequel, so the movie works on that level. In fact (please don't shoot me) I think some of the special effects might even be better in this movie just because of advances in technology in the 10 years since the first movie. I also really like that there are sequels, because my biggest problem with the first movie was that I felt like it ended in midsentence. I was like "what?!? Then what happened?!?" It felt like there was so much more to tell. I'm kind of sad that I never got to see what happened to the characters from the original movie. It should have been a series instead of just one movie. I heard they were developing a series based on Scanners, and I don't know if that will ever happen or not, but I think it would be a cool way to delve deeper into the story.
This sequel is good at building tension. I cared about the characters and what happened to them maybe even more than I did in the original (again, don't shoot me, but I think these characters are more fleshed out than those in the first movie...sometimes I think David Cronenberg doesn't want us to like his characters).
I also like how this movie references and uses tricks from the first movie to establish a connection between the events of this movie and the events of the original. Seeing the scanners learn to step up and take control of their lives and decide to fight the bad guys is cool too. Fights between two scanners are a trip, man. The scenes shouldn't work, but somehow they do. Watching two people fight by staring at each other and making REALLY INTENSE FACES THAT KINDA LOOK LIKE ORGASM FACES WHILE GRUNTING AND YELLING LIKE THIS can be silly, but this movie manages to make it work and be creepy. Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. I might even like it better than the original.
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