Ben Affleck Movie:

Editorial Review:
Either Dean Koontz shouldn't adapt his own bestsellers, or his 1983 novel Phantoms was a pack of horror clichés 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

Phantoms [Region 2] Reviews:
Well done!
2009-09-20 - I loved the book, Phantoms, and the movie followed the book closely. Since Dean Koontz did the screen play that was understandable. The characters were well played and engaging. I recommend this to any scifi fan.

Good scares, horrid acting
2009-07-21 - Phantoms, based on the novel by Dean Koontz, isn't as scary as The Shining and Gin Gwai (The Eye), but it really brings a creepy atmosphere for a horror film that doesn't try too hard. It sets itself apart from the horror flicks of the late 90's such as Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legend by focusing on a ghostly, seemingly demonic figure rather than a guy with a mask. What we get are some very impressive scares and some unusual creepiness throughout the entire film. But this isn't a great film overall. The weakest thing about Phantoms is the absoutely horrible acting. With the exception of O'Toole and Schreiber, the rest of the cast don't look and act very believable. They don't even look like they were really interested in making this horror film.

So if you can try to ignore the poor acting, you will be frightened by everything else.

The book is better, but the movie is watchable
2009-03-27 - 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.





Good, decent if not brilliant science fiction-horror movie
2009-03-16 - _Phantoms_ is the first movie that I seen ever adapted from one of Dean Koontz's works. I found it pretty entertaining overall, a decent if not brilliant science fiction-horror movie.

The basic premise is that two sisters are heading to a quiet Colorado mountain town by the name of Snowfield. The older sister, a Dr. Jenny Pailey, played by Joanna Going, is wanting to get her younger sibling Lisa (played by the rather attractive Rose McGowan) out of Los Angeles, away to a place where it is safe and away from influences Jenny does not approve of. Snowfield would seem just the right place, a quiet town of I believe 400 or so, one with little shops, an old town square type of town one sees throughout rural America. Very early in the movie it is established that Snowfield is not within cell phone range as Lisa's phone cuts out as Jenny drives through a tunnel. Though that is something Jenny was looking forward to - completely cutting off Lisa from L.A. - it soon proves to be a rather Bad Thing.

The town is very quiet. Too quiet. No one is out and about, they don't see anyone walking, anyone driving, no one is in any of the stores or restaurants. For a time I really enjoyed the ominous feeling of a deserted town, not a ghost town but a once living, breathing town where something really horrible has happened very recently, a place where life froze in its track and signs of violence or anything amiss is not at first obvious, just the eerie discovery that everyone suddenly vanished, food still on the table, lights left on. Some investigation by the two reveals that everyone is dead, just bits and pieces of bodies of a few of the citizens left in a horrific manner. It is not clear - at first - why those parts were left in such an obviously disturbing manner, but is it more than enough information to prompt the two sisters to flee.

Before they can get out they run into Sheriff Hammond, played by Ben Affleck, and two deputies, one of them by the name of Stu, played by Liev Schrieber. They join forces and try to find not only what happened but if they can even get out of the town. They discuss various theories - some shot down by Jenny, who has extensive medical training - but soon found out to their horror than the disappearances are still going on.

I am not giving away too much I think by saying it is a monster at work. Or monsters. I liked the premise of the creature, the idea of where it came from, its possibly influence on humanity (revealed when we later meet Peter O'Toole's character, a journalist who has made it one of his life's works to study the creature, in an eerie monologue), and there was at last an interesting explanation of not just why a monster might attack people but why it would also want to scare them too. There were some interesting twists and turns and a few parts - as some reviewers mentioned, with a giant moth in a scene that reminded me of some of the events in the later Stephen King movie _The Mist_ - that were pretty scary. I liked Affleck as the sheriff, Schrieber was good throughout the movie, playing a really creepy guy even before what happened to him (see the movie), and I enjoyed the cast in general. There were some good scares, I didn't find it particularly gory, and I liked the monster even if the effects used to depict it were just adequate (though not distractingly bad or anything).


phantoms dvd
2009-03-07 - awesome movie. I saw this when it first came out a while ago. And, it's still a great horror flick today.