Scanner series

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) It will take supernatural psi powers to determine whether Scanner Cop II is more the second film in the Scanner Cop series or the fifth one in the Scanner series—suffice to say that it’s both and yet not a worthwhile movie. Alluding to events going all the way back to the classic 1981 Cronenberg film, it’s still intent on going more or less through the expected beats of that first film and presumably its sequels—a bit of scanner-on-scanner tracking, some mumbo-jumbo acting as feeble justification for the plot, and a showdown in which at least one head explodes (but not the viewer’s). It’s all very rote—the only area where Scanner Cop II could be an improvement would be in the technical credentials of a straight-to-DVD mid-1990s effort versus an early-1980s low-budget production… but that’s really not much of a recommendation when the film seems determined to go through the expected plot points one after the other. It has a basic thriller’s narrative drive, but not much more—although I suppose that being more familiar with previous films in the series could help.