Phantoms
by Joe Chappelle
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ben Affleck, Joanna Going, Liev Schreiber, Peter O'Toole, Rose McGowanDirector: Joe Chappelle
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 1.85:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-08-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Dimension
Movie Reviews of Phantoms
Movie Review: The book is better, but the movie is watchable
Summary: 4 Stars
I didn't want to give it 4 stars except for the redeeming value of one of it's actors and for the scary suspense that it managed to carry nearly throughout the movie. Liev Schrieber as the nasty Stu Wargle is an absolute gem in the dark. Physically not a match for the "book" Wargle, even without the verbal nastiness of the original Schrieber gets his character across with absolute clarity. Peter O'Toole is always good and he did the Timothy Flyte character justice. Once again, while not true the book, it still worked. Everyone else in the movie (and honestly, even O'Toole) could have been replaced with any actors with adequate ability. I wish they'd have had all the deputies from the book and had allowed one or two of them to last a bit longer.
If not for Schrieber and the build up of suspense I probably would have gone for 3 1/2 otherwise. The reason being the special effects which keeps a decent horror movie from being a great horror movie. They're bloody awful. The creature in the horrible CLOVERFIELD was better than this. Yes, I know the monsters were different but if a low budget loser like CLOVERFIELD can make a credible monster, then PHANTOMS should have managed something a whole lot better. Actually wondered if the same person who did Carpenter's THE THING was involved in this monster also.
The book is wonderful. One of my favorite Koontz's efforts. Plot: A doctor is bringing her little sister (young teen in the book changed to a much older Rose Mcgowan for some reason) to live with her in a small Colorado tourist town. When they get there no one is around, the streets are deserted. PLOT SPOILER: This is another place where the movie deviates from the book. While in one of the shops you see a man's shadow coming up behind them and it's scary as heck. The sherrif (an absurdly young-looking Ben Affleck) and a couple of deputies are already in town trying to find out what's going on. It cut a lot of time out from the book and I have no objection to how it was done. In fact, I think it improved on the original story line there.
In the book Koontz came up with something, while not all that original probably, it wasn't anything that had ever occured to me. A group of scientists was with the military to see if there was an alien invasion, figuring aliens would be so different from us that we wouldn't be able to realize what was happening. Growing up with the flying saucer idea drilled into my head via countless SciFi movies, I found this really interesting and thought provoking.
Anyway, except for the monster and expendable actors, this is a decent movie. Might be a bit intense for youngsters but adults will enjoy getting the heck scared out of them on several occasions.
Summary of Phantoms
A heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat thriller with a hot cast of rising stars, PHANTOMS is the latest from master of suspense, Dean Koontz! Five lone survivors in a devastated town must face the unthinkable: a ferocious force of evil lying below the earth for centuries has surfaced with the power to destroy every human being! Left behind are two sisters, the town sheriff (Academy Award(R)-winner Ben Affleck, GOOD WILL HUNTING), his deputy (Liev Schreiber, SCREAM 2), and a noted tabloid journalist (Peter O'Toole). You're in for a pulse-pounding experience as the survivors race to stop this terrifying threat before it wipes humankind off the face of the earth!Either Dean Koontz shouldn't adapt his own bestsellers, or his 1983 novel Phantoms was a pack of horror clich?s to begin with, or this movie is 15 years past its due date. What might have seemed fresh at the time of Poltergeist now feels like it was made from a derivative script with pages missing. Plagued by reckless leaps of logic, the movie starts with adequately eerie atmosphere and a perversely twisted performance by Scream 2's Liev Schreiber, but decays into a familiar hash of gross-out effects, resulting from the annihilation of a small Colorado town by an evil force known as "The Ancient Enemy." In a dreary role that insults the twilight of his distinguished career, Peter O'Toole plays a paleobiologist whose crackpot ideas have become tabloid fodder, but he holds the key to conquering the beast. Or does he? Sure enough, an obligatory coda leaves room for anticlimactic doubt. Phantoms has a few genuinely creepy highlights, including a devilish beastie resembling an angry flying scorpion, and horror fans will surely find something to admire, but everyone else is advised to proceed with caution and lowered expectations. --Jeff Shannon
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