31 Horror Movies in 31 Days: Phantoms

Phantoms (1998)

Directed by Joe Chappelle

Starring Peter O'Toole, Rose McGowan, Joanna Going, Liev Schreiber, & Ben Affleck

Two sisters come to a small town when they realize no one is there. There are a few mangled bodies, but nothing else. They meet up with the Sheriff and his deputies, still lost for answers. But strange noises keep happening around town, and the military even shows up to investigate. That’s when all hell predictably breaks loose. With the help of a surly tabloid journalist who may know something about the force devouring the town, the survivors will have to rely on their wits to make it out of town.

Director Joe Chapelle previously helmed the atrocious Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and the almost acceptable Hellraiser: Bloodlines. The movie stars people who were probably in the Miramax office when the production was green lit. It becomes painfully clear that the film won’t get better until a demonic moth eats a guy’s face, or something to that order. So, Phantoms should be awful. Yet somehow it just barely isn’t terrible. And after you get past the first half hour and into the action, Phantoms is oddly enjoyable.

Phantoms shares more than a few similarities with John Carpenter’s The Thing and the Chuck Russel 1988 remake of The Blob. Both Blob and Phantoms have government troops in white biohazard suits being chased, mauled, and generally consumed by a formless entity. The Thing and Phantoms both involve shape shifting, constantly mutating forms. Also, both have a scene with an attacking, tentacle dog beast.

Ultimately, these connections are pretty cosmetic and the movie is different where it counts. For instance, Phantoms is the only movie I know of where Ben Affleck gets knocked around by a little boy with a 20 foot tentacle coming out of his mouth. In case it wasn’t already clear, there is a pronounced streak of dark comedy running through the movie. Mostly it comes from O’Toole’s dry delivery or Schreiber’s greasy demeanor, but sometimes it also comes from the unintentionally funny moments.

The real method of fright inducing comes from very loud noises until the movie unveils some creature action. Drastically loud noises get tiresome after a while, but it’s mostly effective at keeping you on edge. The volume raising scare factor might work better if you take a shot every time an unseen townsperson screams from far away, only to reveal that nobody’s there and you need more bourbon.  Once the body snatching gooey thing comes on screen, all the tension comes from a Lovecraftian entity violently absorbing people.

Liev Schreiber is clearly having fun being creepy and mildly threatening. Peter O’Toole is snobby, elitist, and having a ball reading some truly cheesy lines. It’s only the three leads that don’t do much with their characters. Rose McGowan looks positively catatonic and Joanna Going is acting with wide eyes alone. Ben Affleck is a fairly generic hero and certainly not “the bomb” as others have stated. Then again, there isn’t much to work with from the sparse script.

Phantoms isn’t that good a movie, but it’s still pretty entertaining. It’s just a movie with everyone Miramax employed in the late 90s, directed by a guy who can handle special FX and tense scenes better than actors. It’s a good rainy day movie or a good one to turn into a drinking game.

6 out of 10