For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

A Brilliant Conflict

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Karl Volkin (Patrick Kilpatrick) is a vengeance-crazed Scanner who's escaped from prison, and is hellbent on striking back at heroic Scanner cop Samuel Staziak (Brad Dourif look alike Daniel Quinn). What he does to work towards this end is suck the life out of other Scanners, leaving them twisted, burning hunks of flesh. He hopes to become even more powerful than his nemesis, and stops at nothing.This is actually a pretty good B movie, made with competence (if not flamboyance) at every level. Its story, concocted by Mark Sevi, is ultimately very routine, but director Steve Barnett does keep us entertained. It's amusing, as it always is with these movies, to watch actors make all manner of faces as they unleash their devastating mental abilities. Volkin leaves quite the trail of bodies behind him, so viewers can take comfort in a respectable body count, as well as some reasonably impressive (if protracted) makeup effects sequences devised by John Carl Buechler and his company.The cast gives it their best effort. Quinn is a decent enough good guy, but he's outshone by veteran movie villain Kilpatrick, who's fun to watch. A number of recognizable actors pop up along the way, although Robert Forster is given precious little to do as Staziaks' superior officer. Khrystyne Hage ('Head of the Class'), Stephen Mendel, Brenda Swanson, Jerry Potter, and Jewel Shepard ("The Return of the Living Dead") co-star, while Eugene Robert Glazer ('La Femme Nikita'), Allan Kolman (Cronenbergs' "Shivers"), Aaron Lustig ("Bad Channels"), and none other than Kane Hodder have small parts.A worthy follow up to "Scanner Cop".Seven out of 10.

I've never seen David Cronenberg's 1981 "Scanners", nor its sequels which the "Scanner Cop" films are supposedly a spin-off from. The sequel to "Scanner Cop" is workably unfashionable b-grade stamina, but presentably quick moving with plenty of icky make-up and blood that doesn't let up for one second. Anyhow it's a fun entry consisting of numerous skin-splitting action and carved out tension, but it does lose shape towards the latter end with repetitive actions making their way in. Forget the silly plot, as even though it's an atypical concept, what progresses is predictable (cop after bad guy scenarios) with there being little in the way of a story. What it becomes is nothing more than a slide show for the head-jigs, strained facials (which goes full-ball for the film's climax) and of course the exhilarating make-up effects, which are commendably achieved. Patrick Kilpatrick in the bad guy role is great as the viciously stringent scanner going about scanning the power out of other scanners to become even more powerful, so he can take on scanner detective Samuel Staziak (who's perfectly played Daniel Quinn). Kilpatrick was the only one in the cast that didn't seem to be taking all that seriously with the constant grimaces when notoriously scanning his victims (but he's meant to be playing a nut-case), which was the opposite for a determined, stone-cold Quinn. Khrystyne Haje, Stephen Mendel and Robert Forster provide fine support.

This movie, like the other Scanner movies made past the first one, had good make-up effects, but also some less-than-par acting (the hold-up/hostage scene with the three thugs was so bad it was hilarious). But other than that, the movie was very entertaining in my opinion. Carl Volkin, played by the intimidating-looking Pat Kilpatrick, is an escaped criminal scanner on the loose, trying to become the most powerful scanner in the world. He accomplishes this by draining the life force of various scanners around the city, resulting in some bizarre melting/death sequences. In the end he has to contend with Sam Staziak, the most useful cop on the police force (obviously). There's a few cool-looking face-contorting illusion sequences, and a head explosion in the end (of course). Overall this movie was fast-paced, the acting was a little hard to swallow, but the special effects were awesome for a b-movie. I'd recommend it if you like innovative sci-fi or cop action movies.

Scanner Cop 2 is decent, for a B-Movie. It's certainly watchable. It's not as bad as, say, Scanners 3, but it certainly has its moments. However, I personally feel the movie was cheapened a bit... a constant point of stress in the Scanners universe involved the inner struggle between using Scanner powers and experiencing the side effects, or taking the drugs that dull their powers, possibly becoming addicted and becoming vegetables in the process (as shown by Scanners 2). In this movie, a new Ephemerol is magically created to allow the scanner cop to use his abilities with no penalty, without going nuts in the process. True, addition of this plot point may have possibly taken some of the focus from the movie, but that would be like making a Batman movie which completely ignores the blow dealt to Batman's social life by is 'nightly job'. But I'm getting off-track. Scanner Cop 2 is definitely a good movie, compared to some of the others in the series.