The Rise of Telekinesis in Movies: From Carrie to Scanners and Beyond

Scanners and the Head Explosion That Shocked the World

Everyone remembers the head explosion. You don’t even have to be a horror fan to know it. In 1981, David Cronenberg’s Scanners gave audiences one of the most infamous movie moments of all time, a practical effects showstopper that has lived on in GIFs, memes, and “most shocking moments” lists for decades.

But there’s more to Scanners than just one exploding cranium. Cronenberg’s film wasn’t an outlier — it was part of a wave. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, telekinesis and psychic powers became a recurring obsession for filmmakers, especially in horror and science fiction. Scanners hit right in the middle of that psychic boom, taking the idea further than anyone had dared before.

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Carrie: The Bloody Beginning

The story really starts in 1976, when Brian De Palma adapted Stephen King’s debut novel Carrie. Sissy Spacek’s shy, bullied girl with telekinetic powers turned into a horror icon the second she locked the gym doors and let her rage erupt.

Carrie was more than just a scary movie. It made telekinesis personal, a metaphor for adolescence, rage, and repression. King and De Palma gave psychic powers a dark, emotional charge — not just a gimmick, but a way to turn inner trauma into outer horror.

The film was a hit, and Hollywood noticed. Suddenly, psychic powers weren’t just the stuff of pulp novels. They could carry a prestige horror movie, sell tickets, and linger in the cultural imagination.

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The Fury: Telekinesis Gets Louder

Two years later, De Palma returned to the theme with The Fury (1978), another story about gifted young psychics being hunted, exploited, and weaponized. Where Carrie was small and intimate, The Fury went big — government conspiracies, car chases, espionage, and one of the most gloriously over-the-top psychic death scenes ever filmed (John Cassavetes exploding in slow motion).

Between Carrie and The Fury, the groundwork was laid: telekinesis was cinematic. It was visceral. It could be bloody, operatic, tragic, or thrilling.

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Scanners: The Turning Point

By the time Cronenberg made Scanners, the idea of psychic powers had moved into the realm of paranoia. This wasn’t about adolescence or emotional trauma — this was about control.

Cronenberg imagined a world where corporations and governments wanted to exploit psychic powers, creating scanners who could not only move objects but invade minds, manipulate thoughts, and even cause heads to rupture under pressure.

The film’s central showdown — Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) vs. Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside) — is less about physical combat than psychic domination. The head explosion, shocking as it is, is really just the hook. What Cronenberg was playing with was scarier: the idea that your mind itself could be violated, weaponized, or stolen.

Scanners became a cult hit and one of Cronenberg’s defining works. It also cemented telekinesis as more than a horror gimmick. It was a genre of its own.

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The 80s Psychic Boom

The early 80s saw Hollywood dive headlong into psychic stories. Some leaned horror, others leaned science fiction, but all carried echoes of what Carrie and Scanners had sparked.

• Firestarter (1984): Another Stephen King adaptation, this time with Drew Barrymore as a pyrokinetic child hunted by shadowy government agents. The parallels to Scanners are impossible to miss — psychic children as weapons, powers as both gift and curse.

• The Dead Zone (1983): Cronenberg again, adapting King’s novel about a man (Christopher Walken) who wakes from a coma with psychic visions. Less about gore, more about moral choices, but still rooted in the anxiety of hidden power.

• Dreamscape (1984): Dennis Quaid entering people’s dreams to fight psychic battles, blending horror imagery with sci-fi adventure.

These films didn’t always dominate the box office, but they created a cultural moment. Psychic powers were everywhere, from TV (The Tomorrow People) to anime (Akira).

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Why Telekinesis Worked

Why did telekinesis resonate so much in that period? A few reasons stand out:

• Paranoia: The Cold War era was filled with fear of mind control, brainwashing, and government experiments. Psychic movies gave those fears a fantastical twist.

• Wish Fulfillment: Who wouldn’t want to move objects with their mind, or strike back against bullies and abusers without lifting a finger? Telekinesis was the ultimate outsider fantasy.

• Metaphor: Psychic powers became shorthand for internal struggles — adolescence in Carrie, corporate control in Scanners, destiny in The Dead Zone.

It was a flexible device, equally effective for gore-soaked horror or thoughtful drama.

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The Legacy: From 80s Horror to Stranger Things

Telekinesis didn’t fade away. If anything, it became part of pop culture’s permanent vocabulary.

The most obvious heir is Stranger Things, with Eleven channeling her powers in ways straight out of Carrie and Scanners — nosebleeds, lab experiments, shadowy organizations.

Superhero movies have carried the torch, too. The X-Men films gave us Jean Grey as a blockbuster telekinetic, while anime landmarks like Akira owe just as much to the 80s psychic wave as they do to Japanese storytelling traditions.

And of course, the head explosion lives on — referenced, parodied, and endlessly replayed.

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Conclusion: Scanners at the Center

When people talk about Scanners, they almost always go straight to the special effect. And yes, it’s unforgettable. But the real story is how Cronenberg’s film stood at the center of a psychic storm, part of a broader cultural fascination with telekinesis that stretched from Carrie in 1976 to Firestarter and Dreamscape in the mid-80s.

Telekinesis wasn’t just a trend — it was a mirror. A way for horror and science fiction to wrestle with power, fear, and control. And Scanners, more than any other film, turned that mirror directly back on us.

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