For a movie that is the sequel to the spin-off of a film that people mostly remember for the exploding head sequence, I shouldn’t have expected much. David Cronenberg had demonstrated his potential as a writer and director with 1981’s body-horror classic Scanners, but by the time this Steve Barnett film came out 14 years later, his entire involvement was as a bit of advertising copy and a small payment. But whilst Scanners: The Showdown fails to be a worthwhile watch by any conventional standards, it does hold some very valuable lessons about how to screw up a decent central premise.
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