Exploring the Sequels

# 2 Scanners 3: The Takeover

A Very Scanners Christmas

So I didn’t plan on discussing a Christmas movie this season. That’s for the Silent Night Deadly Night series next year. But after I hit play on Plex (or was it Pluto?) and after watching 68 seconds of ads on hims supplements the opening scene began in an expensive, high rise apartment where a very 80’s yuppy Christmas party was unfolding. I saw a Christmas tree immediately so it’s gotta count.

The main characters are quickly established. Adopted brother and sister Alex and Helena Monet are descendants of the original scanners but there are no returning characters from Scanners 1 or 2. At the party, Alex is asked by his friend to show off his scanner powers like a party trick for the crowd (scanners now seem to be accepted by society in this??) which backfires causing the friend’s death. Alex is somehow inexplicably found not guilty but devastated, he travels to Thailand to study with Buddhist monks to better control his powers. We also witness Helena use her powers to defend her and Joyce, her best friend/Alex’s girlfriend, against leather jacket wearing, punk style, switch blade toting gang members. They went down that same alley every other character in an 80’s and 90’s movie does running into the these same guys.

Helena struggles with terrible, debilitating headaches from being a scanner and sneaks the experimental drug Eph 3 from her adopted scientist father, Dr. Elton Monet (Colin Fox). She experiences immediate relief but at a great price. Dr. Elton invented EPH 3 but the drug had not been tested for side effects yet which alters her mind and “blocks her conscious”. Helena immediately becomes our main villain going full red kryptonite Superwoman for the next 90 minutes empowered to take over her dad’s pharmaceutical company and then the world.

Director Christian Duguay moves even further from any lore that was established from two already very loosely connected movies and we never get a clear picture on how society feels about the scanner population. Duguay got his start as a music video director and is more much comfortable this time leaning into that visual style to support a story that goes absolutely bananas by the third act. The Polish actress playing Helena (Liliana Kimorowska) just goes for it with inspired overacting and is in a completely different movie than everyone else. Alex’s (Steve Parrish) storyline is a straight to dvd Jean Claude Van Damme action rip off with scenes like saving the day on motorcycle, played to electric guitar, looking like the poor man’s Mads Mikkelsen. Unfortunately he plays his part so understated and sleepy that the one thing he can’t seem to scan is charisma. He does a solid job in the action scenes though.

We are again following themes of family who ultimately are pitted against each other this time as Alex has to return from Thailand to stop his sister from taking over the world and manufacturing Eph 3 on a massive scale. Helena enlists fellow scanners that were experimented on and tortured in their youth along with her by giving them the drug as well. After taking Eph3 her new scanner minions turn into henchman that look like they didn’t make the final cut from Tim Burton’s Batman casting call. Trench coats, Ray Bans, ponytails..oh my.

Through all the non sensical plotting and early 90’s weirdness Duguay also seems to be (clumsily and very half heartedly) exploring the breaking of gender norms and sexuality, overcoming patriarchal boundaries and sexual abuse, and capitalism, corporate greed, and breaking glass ceilings. But I might be being a bit charitable here as a couple scenes of gratuitous nudity and sex persist including a really creepy interaction in a hot tub involving Helena and her dad that was a head scratcher. Maybe a bit too many themes to cover in the third outing of a straight to video series where telepathic people battle by turning their heads erratically from side to side at each other.

Scanners 3 has moved the furthest away from being a horror adjacent sci fi film to a full on late 80’s sci fi action film. This came out in 1991 but the 80’s is still strong in this one. I mean that as a compliment. Even though again this realllly doesn’t reach the heights of Cronenberg’s classic there are still plenty of bulging face and exploding head special effects, absolute camp over the top acting, a visually creative scene where the antagonist can control people on tv with her mind, and Helena makes her boss dance a strip tease in a restaurant. Good times.

Although this is the most scattershot and undisciplined of the three films so far I enjoyed it for its oddly plotted weirdness (it really feels like two different movies threaded together) and dedication to continuing some inspired practical special effects. This may be the closest we get to a Scanners Halloween 3: Season of the Witch bat shit crazy sequel. I just wished this one worked on that same level. It lacks that movie’s confidence to fully break away from original source material to fully become its own perfectly calibrated camp alchemy.

I give a light recommendation but if your in the right mood you might let Scanners 3: The Takeover take you over too!

Next up…Scanner Cop.

Happy Holidays!!

Free bonus content 😉

Below I’m listing my top 5 favorite Christmas horror movies. Please message some of yours too if you’d like!

1.) Black Christmas

2.) Deadly Games (Dial Code Santa Claus)

3.) Krampus

4.) Christmas Evil

5.) Silent Night Deadly Night

(I love Gremlins (my # 2 favorite Christmas movie after Home Alone) but not counting it in this list).