Movie Review : Phantoms (1998)

For every historically great film out there, a cemetery of forgotten features lies underneath. People watch movies to be entertained and then move on with their lives. Sometimes a movie is remembered for the wrong reasons though. Sometimes a movie is remembered even if no one has seen it. Joe Chappelle’s adaptation of Dean Koontz’ Phantoms would’ve been erased from our collective memory for one reason only. 

AFFLECK, YOU DA BOMB IN PHANTOMS, YO! That line from Jay & Bob Strikes Back implies that Phantoms sucks, but does it? What kind of movie is it? I did the dirty work again for you guys!

Phantoms tells the story of Jennifer Palley (Joanna Going), a young doctor who works at a small ski resort town in Colorado. When she convinces her wayward little sister Lisa (Rose McGowan) to spend a few days with her over there to distance her from a troublesome relationship, they arrive to a mostly empty city, riddled with a few mangled corpses. Not just killed, but DES-TROYED. There’s an evil lurking in town that defies logic and nature itself. 

Quite bad, but almost good

There’s no injustice of history here. Phantoms is a bad movie, but it’s bad in the best way a movie can be. It’s failing hard at doing something quite ambitious. Most of it is technical and creative ineptitude, but it was somewhat before its time as well. I don’t think Phantoms would’ve been better if it was a big CGI puke like every horror movie is nowadays, but it could’ve gotten a little help from computers to smooth its rougher edge.

If you tweaked the screenplay here and there, Phantoms could be the closest thing you got to a proper Silent Hill adaptation on screen. I’m talking better than the laughable excuse for a movie we got in 2006. The isolation, the lingering sense of desolation, even the attacks from the supernatural creatures feel Silent Hill-ish. Given that it’s adapted from a 1983 novel, it’s probably Silent Hill that was inspired by Dean Koontz and not the opposite.

What’s so bad, then? Well, it’s Dean Koontz: disposable characters, a generic ancient, Lovecraftian evil that has nothing to do with anything otherwise, no sense of impending doom,  it’s just a string of things happening to random people who don’t deserve it. Oh and the acting is pretty bad too. Outside of Liev Schreiber delivering a surprising legitimately creepy incel police deputy, everyone is stiff and kind of sucks. 

So yeah, in the parlance of David Jame Keaton and J. David Osborne, this movie is almost good, but it’s bad. Ben Affleck was NOT the bomb in Phantoms, yo. 

But is it so bad it’s good?

Not quite? Because it’s legitimately effective in small doses. It has one or two scenes reminiscent of Hellraiser, including one where the ghost of Liev Schreiber ambushes Rose McGowan in a bathroom stall. So, it’s just frustrating that Joe Chappelle and (to a certain extent) Dean Koontz never manage to pull it together. A fun bad movie has to be incompetent all the way through otherwise it’s just uneven and annoying.

Phantoms has also weird tonal shifts lead by a story that doesn’t really know what the fuck it’s trying to say. There’s no harm in just trying to entertain, but what is it you’re trying to communicate with your story? What are the stakes? I wasn’t sure if Phantoms was about good versus evil, survival of the fittest or the triumph of American genius. Once again, stakes aren’t mandatory, but if you’re gonna suck, suck all the way through.

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Not gonna lie. I believe you should watch Phantoms at least once. It’s an absolute mess of a movie, but it’s crammed full of interesting ideas without any spine or structure whatsoever. You can also witness a babyfaced Ben Affleck sucking really hard at being a destitute hot shot federal agent turned local sheriff. It doesn’t quite deserve to be forgotten, but it is a stepping stone movie who’s sole existence revolves around making better art from it.

5.4/10

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