Movies Like Scanners
If you loved Scanners's Science Fiction and Horror storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.
★ Top Picks
Possessor
Tasya Vos, an elite corporate assassin, uses brain-implant technology to take control of other people’s bodies to terminate high profile targets. As she sinks deeper into her latest assignment, Vos becomes trapped inside a mind that threatens to obliterate her.
Patrick
A comatose hospital patient harasses and kills through his powers of telekinesis to claim his private nurse as his own.
Lucy
A woman, accidentally caught in a dark deal, turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.
Push
After his father, an assassin, is brutally murdered, Nick Gant vows revenge on Division, the covert government agency that dabbles in psychic warfare and experimental drugs. Hiding in Hong Kong's underworld, Nick assembles a band of rogue psychics dedicated to destroying Division. Together with Cassie, a teenage clairvoyant, Nick goes in search of a missing girl and a stolen suitcase that could be the key to accomplishing their mutual goal.
Dreamscape
In order to diagnose the psychic traumas suffered by his patients, Dr. Paul Novotny gets young Alex Gardner to enter their dreams.
Upgrade
A brutal mugging leaves Grey Trace paralyzed in the hospital and his beloved wife dead. A billionaire inventor soon offers Trace a cure — an artificial intelligence implant called STEM that will enhance his body. Now able to walk, Grey finds that he also has superhuman strength and agility — skills he uses to seek revenge against the thugs who destroyed his life.
Hollow Man
Cocky researcher Sebastian Caine is working on a project to make living creatures invisible. Determined to achieve the ultimate breakthrough, Caine pushes his team to move to the next phase — using himself as the subject. The test is a success, but when the process can't be reversed and Caine seems doomed to future without flesh, he starts to turn increasingly dangerous.
More Movies Like Scanners
Species
In 1993, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Project receives a transmission detailing an alien DNA structure, along with instructions on how to splice it with human DNA. The result is Sil, a sensual but deadly creature who can change from a beautiful woman to an armour-plated killing machine in the blink of an eye.
The Fury
When a devious plot separates CIA agent Peter Sandza from his son, Robin, the distraught father manages to see through the ruse. Taken because of his psychic abilities, Robin is being held by Ben Childress, who is studying people with supernatural powers in hopes of developing their talents as weapons. Soon Peter pairs up with Gillian, a teen who has telekinesis, to find and rescue Robin.
Serenity
When the renegade crew of Serenity agrees to hide a fugitive on their ship, they find themselves in an action-packed battle between the relentless military might of a totalitarian regime who will destroy anything – or anyone – to get the girl back and the bloodthirsty creatures who roam the uncharted areas of space. But... the greatest danger of all may be on their ship.
The Medusa Touch
A French detective in London reconstructs the life of a man lying in hospital with severe injuries with the help of journals and a psychiatrist. He realises that the man had powerful telekinetic abilities.
The 6th Day
A world of the very near future in which cattle, fish, and even the family pet can be cloned. But cloning humans is illegal - that is until family man Adam Gibson comes home from work one day to find a clone has replaced him. Taken from his family and plunged into a sinister world he doesn't understand, Gibson must not only save himself from the assassins who must destroy him to protect their secret, but uncover who and what is behind the horrible things happening to him.
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell
Dr Simon Helder, sentenced to an insane asylum for crimes against humanity, recognises its director as the brilliant Baron Frankenstein, the man whose work he had been trying to emulate before his imprisonment. Frankenstein utilises Helder's medical knowledge for a project he has been working on for some time. He is assembling a man from vital organs extracted from various inmates in the asylum. And the Baron will resort to murder to acquire the perfect specimens for his most ambitious project ever.
Margaux
As a group of seniors celebrate their final college days at a smart house, the house's highly advanced AI system, Margaux, begins to take on a deadly presence of her own. A carefree weekend of partying turns into a dystopian nightmare as they realize Margaux's plans to eliminate her tenants one way or another. Time begins to run out as the group desperately tries to survive and outsmart the smart home.
Death Machine
Chaank Armaments is experimenting with the ultimate fighting machine which is part human - part machine. So far, the Hardman project has been unreliable and has killed a number of innocent people. The genius behind this project is Jack who lives in a world of models, toys and magazines. When he is fired by Cale for killing a few corporate officers, he unleashes the ultimate killing machine called the 'Warbeast' against Cale and those who would help her.
Resident Evil
When a virus leaks from a top-secret facility, turning all resident researchers into ravenous zombies and their lab animals into mutated hounds from hell, the government sends in an elite military task force to contain the outbreak.
The Hidden
When average, law-abiding citizens suddenly turn to a life of hedonistic behavior and violent crime, Detective Tom Beck is tasked with helping young FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher determine the cause.
THX 1138
People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Scanners (1981): Science Fiction and Horror themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of Scanners.
See full details for Scanners (1981)