Scanners II: The New Order takes the corporate espionage of the original and ramps it up to full-blown paranoid political corruption — a beautifully strange detour down Alan J. Pakula avenue. Halfway through, when corrupt cop Forrester forces new scanner on the block, David, to make the Mayor elect him as Chief of Police, is when the film enters a magnificent flow state... for about 5 minutes. And then David's foster parents and biological sister (and her ex-boyfriend who's also a scanner) get introduced, greatly complicating — and by proxy worsening — the plot and pacing of the film. But those last 15ish minutes re-enter that magnificent flow state so as to make that bridging half hour worth drudging through. Ebbs and flows.
As any good sequel worth its salt, it introduces some new cool things for the scanners to do, namely projecting themselves into the eyes of a person kilometres away, seeing what they see and even controlling them. Nothing here reaches the all-time high of the first Scanners where that bald guy gets his Shit Blown Da Fuck Up, but it gets real close with the scene where they control some guy, and the convenience store robbery gone terribly awry. Plenty of fun to be had here.
Scanners II: The New Order takes the corporate espionage of the original and ramps it up to full-blown paranoid political corruption — a beautifully strange detour down Alan J. Pakula avenue. Halfway through, when corrupt cop Forrester forces new scanner on the block, David, to make the Mayor elect him as Chief of Police, is when the film enters a magnificent flow state... for about 5 minutes. And then David's foster parents and biological sister (and her ex-boyfriend who's also a scanner) get introduced, greatly complicating — and by proxy worsening — the plot and pacing of the film. But those last 15ish minutes re-enter that magnificent flow state so as to make that bridging half hour worth drudging through. Ebbs and flows.
As any good sequel worth its salt, it introduces some new cool things for the scanners to do, namely projecting themselves into the eyes of a person kilometres away, seeing what they see and even controlling them. Nothing here reaches the all-time high of the first Scanners where that bald guy gets his Shit Blown Da Fuck Up, but it gets real close with the scene where they control some guy, and the convenience store robbery gone terribly awry. Plenty of fun to be had here.
