Of the five "Scanners" movies that have been made to date, "Scanners III: The Takeover" is the least of the series. That is not to say that it isn't fun to watch; if you like B movies, this particular one does have some entertaining elements. It's pretty well made for what was a low budget, there are some pleasing splatter moments here and there, and the core of the story does have some intriguing idea that had potential. However, the actual execution of the story does have some unsatisfying aspects to it. Even though the movie runs only 95 or so minutes, you can really feel the padding; it didn't have to run as long as it did. The expansion of the powers of the scanners gets downright silly and unbelievable at times, even though this is a B movie. And the occasional attempts at humor run all over the map, ranging from being low key effective to downright embarrassing. If you liked the other entries of this series, you'll probably find enough to enjoy here, but you'll still think that the screenplay (by four writers!) should have had some serious rewrites before filming started.

A young female scanner turns from a sweet young thing into a murderous, power-crazed villain after she takes an experimental drug developed by her father. Her brother, who is also a scanner, is the only one powerful enough to stop her.We start out with the standard good and evil plot, brother against sister... but, in all fairness, this is a plot structure that works. From there, it actually gets much more creative, introducing the use of Eastern meditation to control the scanning and the use of TV to more widely broadcast scanning.Some memorable moments are here, too, including the mind-control dance scene, the Taiwanese boxing and plenty of firefights and explosions, including an arm that flies off.As with "Scanners II", this definitely could have been a series, even more than the last film. The ideas developed here really set up a broader picture of good scanners against bad ones, and how such powers could be used not just on a combat level, but to actually infiltrate and dominate society. There is much potential.

The film opens with a scrolling caption informing us of what scanners are. The film begins proper at some Christmas party. Alex Monet (Steve Parrish) and his best friend are talking to some girls. The conversation turns to scanners. The girls don't believe they exist. Alex is a scanner and his friend convinces him to prove the girls wrong. So using his psychic power he makes his friend slide backwards on his own. Someone then grabs Alex and pats him on the back, Alex is surprised and loses control of his powers, his friend is jerked back violently and out of the balcony doors over the guard rail and to his death 40 odd floor to the concrete pavement below. Oops. Alex is upset, even though officially it was ruled an accident. We learn that he has traveled all over the world and finally decided to settle at a monastery in Thailand so he can learn to control his powers. Meanwhile back home his sister Helana Monet (the sexy Liliana Komorowska) is trying to lead a normal life. However see experiences severe pain and headaches. Her and Alex's father who adopted them, Dr Elton Monet (Colin Fox) is the owner of a large medical research company and is trying to invent a drug in the form of a patch which releases the drug into the bloodstream through the skin, eventually Dr Monet thinks it will help all scanners. He tells Helana about this drug, and that at this stage it's highly experimental and hasn't been tested properly. One night when the pain becomes unbearable Helana tries the drug, immediately the pain disappears. The next morning at breakfast outside a Pigeon craps on her hand, she stares at it and using her powers makes it explode. The drug has changed her from a nice, sweet girl into a wild, power-crazed murderer in mere hours! Later that night she visits Dr Baumann (Harry Hill) who is performing experiments on scanners. She frees all the scanners in his care and gives them patches so she can control their psychic powers too. From then on she sets her evil plan for world domination in action! The family lawyer Micheal (Daniel Pilon) becomes suspicious and tracks Alex down. He convinces Alex to go back home. Once back Helana realizes that Alex can stop her so she uses other scanners to try and kill him. Alex survives and enlists the help of research scientist and Helana's best friend Joyce Stone (Valerie Valois).Together they discover Helana is going to transmit her mind controlling signals using video and into tens of millions of American homes through their T.V.s! Competently but sometimes flatly directed by Christian Duguay, and called scanner force here in the UK, this was better than I expected, thanks to a script by B.J. Nelson, Julie Richard and David Preston (it took three people to write this?!) that at least keeps things moving at a fair pace and is fairly entertaining if a little silly at times. But the films main ace up it's sleeve is Liliana Komorowska as Helana, the films over the top villainness. As far as I'm aware I've never heard of her before, or seen her in any other film, but I really liked her in this. Probably better than the film deserves to be honest. She's a sexy, dominant, evil and devious, murdering scanner, by the end of the film I really wanted her to die in the most painful gory way possible, unfortunately I didn't get my wish, which seemed a bit of an anti climax. Easily the films best sequence involves her, she walks into Dr Baumanns office, dressed in a long coat, a sexy mini skirt, knee high leather boots and a white scarf, she looks classy, dominant and sexy. She teases and plays with Baumann, making his finger explode, and then finally making his head explode as well. She slowly walks around the facility killing the remaining guards using her powers before eventually making an over the top speech to her fellow scanner to try and convince them to join her, and help her carry out her evil plans. At one point she says "we shouldn't be at the bottom of the dung heap, we should be at the top!", she's class all the way through and makes the film watchable all on her own, and she gets naked in a hot tub as well! Alex makes a likable hero. We get some nudity and sex, at some points it looks like a cheap porno, especially with the busty blond nurse hitting on Alex! She is half undressed on top of Alex on a pool table, four men burst in and one says "what do we have here a rapist?", the nurse replies "oh no, he was willing!". The gore was sort of disappointing, there is only one exploding head and it's only on screen for about a second, blink and you'll miss it. Although I did like the sequence where Alex kills another scanner by spinning him around in a revolving door! There is an action sequence where Alex on his motorbike is chased by four scanners dressed like 1930's gangsters in a bus, but because of the low budget there are no other cars on the road at all, it looks a bit sad actually! The ending is a bit of a let down also, nothing more than Helana's patch falling off turning back into the sweet innocent girl she was at the start of the film. Probably worth a watch at least, if not for Liliana Komorowska's delightful villainness. Watchable, if nothing spectacular.

Let me start out by saying that this is a wonderful film. When I rented this movie initially I thought that it was going to be one of those low budget action films with awful special effects, terrible dialogue, terrible plot and gratuitous nudity (like the highlander movies). I was dead wrong. Scanners III is a wonderfully cerebral film, chock full of allusions and references to American folklore, popular science fiction novels of the past century (i.e. 1984 and just about everything by Michael Chricton), Huey Lewis and The News song lyrics (I've got a brand new drug) and the religion and philosophy of the Algonquin Indians. What an analytical treat!!As the iconography in this film suggests, American culture is dominated by the media, the pharmecutical companies, and cheap dares we do to impress girls on Saturday nights. We are soulless zombies, only acting on impulses that have been passed down to us by our parents. If we only used our heads (as Alex Monet does in this film (monet is an obvious reference to the french impressionistic artist...there are many more delicious reference-goodies in this gem!)), we could overcome the social and mental chains that are hindering us from developing as a society. The film is beckoning us to cast away homburg hats and black suits of the nineteen forties for more casual clothing, eschew hot concentual sex with busty mental-hospital nurses for passionate lovemaking with loved ones, to send christianity and all of western society to the junkyard and take up Tibetan Buddhism, the only religion that has the capability to give one enough strength to overcome one's weaknesses. In no way is this film just another sequel to David Cronenberg's far inferior film Scanners. This is a treatise on how to live life successfully. I urge you to watch it immediately.