You won't be disappointed!

Fantastic!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Unaware that he is a scanner, a young social misfit is mentored by a police officer to use his psychic abilities to solve crimes in this belated sequel to David Cronenberg's 'Scanners'. While not a patch on the original, 'The New Order' is hardly worthless. Many plot elements are recycled from Part One, most notably the scanner oblivious to his powers and a battle between a 'good' and 'bad' one, however, the film also takes the concept in refreshing new directions. His detective work as a scanner is fascinating (even if we only ever really see it in action once); there is a great bit where he uses scanning to stop a store robbery; another scanner controls video arcade machines with his abilities; and at its most touching, our protagonist inadvertently uses his scanning powers to comfort and calm down pet store animals. The film is very well photographed too with lots of low camera angles and tracking shots courtesy of 'My Bloody Valentine' cinematographer Rodney Gibbons. The biggest minus here is the acting, which varies from non-charismatic to annoyingly over-the-top, with Raoul Max Trujillo the worst offender in the latter regard. The action sequences are solid, the special effects are almost as good as in the original, and while the atmosphere is never the same, the film at least manages to add a lot of extra ideas to the mythology of scanners.

David Cronenberg's SCANNERS is one of my favourites of his films – it's a rip-roaring B-movie with a great premise, good acting, and genuine horror. When I sat down to watch the sequel, I had a good idea of what I was getting myself into – an unconnected B-movie in name only, made in 1991 so probably pretty cheesy. Boy, I was wrong! This is a sequel that follows the original film pretty closely but puts a fresh spin on proceedings, and it actually doesn't come off too badly in comparison to the first. Sure, the director can't hope to match Cronenberg's work, but for the most part this is a pacy, exciting little thriller with some well-staged action scenes. And it's only a little bit cheesy.David Hewlett makes for a charismatic lead and he's ably supported by an intriguing cast. This being a Canadian production, half of the actors are French, and Yvan Ponton is the best of the lot, a truly hissable and appalling villain. It was great to see Isabelle Mejias again after her titular role in video-nasty era horror flick JULIE DARLING; Mejias is an actress with an indefinable, hypnotic quality about her. I would describe her as elfin and she lights up the screen whenever I see her; it's a shame she hasn't done more work. Raoul Trujillo, playing an evil scanner, goes way over the top but there was something about his crazed, energetic performance that grabs your attention in the same way that Jim Carrey does. Of course, there are the requisite exploding heads and other bubbly, grisly special effect sequences, and these are all well-handled. This is a fine little film that puts other B-movies from the era to shame.

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.

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.