Macabre...ish Horror Review: Scanners

Scanners, 1981/ 1 hr 43 min.

In a mall, a man named Vale is a telepath, known as a Scanner, has been chased, sedated and captured by a company who is recruiting and training people capable of telepathy and telekinesis.

There are 247 in the group and the goal is to stop an underground group of malevolent scanners. The leader Daniel Revok, a former mental patient, is killing all Scanners who oppose him.

Vale is tasked to infiltrate Revok’s group but he has likely infiltrated the Consec group with his own moles. So far, it is not going well, there has been a shocking loss of life via assassin.

 The Head of the program, Dr. Paul Ruth, teaches Vale how to control his abilities. And sends him out on missions. Then a turf war, of sort, ensues between Revok Scanners, Consec Scanners and caught in the middle are the unaffiliated scanners.

 Later on they discover the origin of scanners, Revok and Vale plus a much greater and more insidious plan. But then Revok makes a new plan from this new info and the battle continues between just the two of them and it’s pretty heinous and has quite a twist.

This is a 1980s Canadian sci fi horror and David Cronenberg creation, which tells you just how violent, graphic and gory this is. The story is a little long winded which is more of a sign of the times than any failing on the filmmaker’s part. Interesting concept and story plus I’m fascinated by the exploding heads and scanning fetuses.