Dean Koontz, to me at least, has always been just behind Stephen King in the horror story genre. Phantoms only lends more to that argument. Also, the movie isn’t really great either.
Two sisters Jenny (Joanna Going) and Lisa (Rose McGowan) are on their way to a quiet little town in the mountains to get away from their problems and relax. Snowfield Colorado is where Jenny lives and she wants her sister Lisa to disconnect from her life in LA for a little while. When the two arrive in Snowfield however, things are a bit more “quiet” than they wanted. Not a person on the streets and the first body they find is a dead one in Jenny’s home.
Jenny and Lisa begin searching the town for help and survivors and find more questions than answers. As night falls on the little town they meet up with the local sheriff (Affleck) and a couple of his deputies. Things get heck of a lot more creepy when they find a message scrawled on a mirror in a bathroom that was locked from the inside and no one actually there. The message leads them to a Dr. Flyte (Peter O’Toole) and the mystery of an “Ancient Enemy”. More disappearances and then the army shows up. They soon discover that the “Ancient Enemy” is a being that can absorb thoughts as well as people. Now the only real mystery, is how to stop it?
Phantoms is labeled as “an original thriller” right on the poster, but it really isn’t. Take bits and pieces of some of Stephen King’s novels (IT, and The Langoliers) pieces of christian mythology (Legion) and mix in a dash of Michael Crichton science fiction (Sphere) and you have Phantoms. A being that can take the form of anything, knows your thoughts and fears, and can destroy everything you know… and a giant moth. It’s really not scary at all.
Ben Affleck gets a bad rap for this movie but really the worst of the bunch is Rose McGowan. There are several times when her character is confronted with something either scary or surprising and she seems to have tourettes, complete with head shakes and a noise. It’s weird. Like she went to the Hannah Barbera school of acting or something. The biggest victim here is poor Peter O’Toole’s reputation. I mean, he did King Ralph (which I saw in the theater) before this, but it seems after Phantoms he has yet to recover.
Phantoms isn’t really scary. I saw it years ago on VHS (yes… tape) and remembered it being a bit more creepy than this time, but I guess I’ve gotten older. I guess if you want to watch Rose McGowan’s atrocious acting and see a bunch of black goo kill people, it’s your best bet. It’s a largely unremarkable movie that seems like it could have or should have been made for TV. that probably says more about the movie than my entire review.
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