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| Stereotypical 90's thriller poster for the win! |
The Short Version:
Dean Koontz's Phantoms manages to overcome most of its B-movie trappings to earn the distinction of being the best feature-length X-Files episode never made.
The Long Version:
I love to read Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers. I love to read
in the bathroom period, so to have books that are tailor-made for the job is a
real treat of Western society. The reason I bring this up is because the books
often feature obscure movie gems and other things left in what they
delightfully term the “Dustbin of History”. I think if we were to go sifting
through that place more often, we’d find a whole bunch of things we wished we
had but thought didn’t exist.
Dean Koontz’s Phantoms has most definitely taken up
residence in the dustbin of movie history. Or as they call it these days,
Netflix.
In case you missed it, this 1998 thriller had most of the
requisite elements to become a modest hit at the time:
• Based on a best-selling novel
• Simple, easy-to-remember title
• Full usage of the “Stephen King’s” principle of name
recognition
• Cast of hot, young 20-somethings
• Peter Freaking O’Toole
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| Omar Sharif wishes he was that cool. |
Yes, that last one was not a mistake. Lawrence of Arabia
himself – the man so awesome he turned down a knighthood – was in a low-rent 90's thriller
with a bunch of Teen Choice Award hopefuls. What was he doing in it? Some might
call it ‘slumming it,’ or ‘paying the rent.’ I prefer to
think of it as ‘adding a touch of class
to an otherwise lesser film.’ I will give the producers credit: if you’re
going to have a character whose job is mostly to lend the proceedings
credibility by espousing much exposition, you could do worse than hire Peter
O’Toole to do it. I for one could listen to that man read the phonebook. Or lyrics to horrible songs:
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Since I know of precisely two other people who have seen this
movie – in theatres no less! – I can safely assume you, dear reader, are in the
dark as to what I’m going on about. Phantoms is a movie that is chalk full of
scary movie clichés:
1. Two sisters return to their sleepy Colorado town to find that nearly every
single person in town has vanished very suddenly. 2. Things get spooky quickly and
soon they run into the hunky still-alive Sheriff, his screw-loose deputy and
another soon-to-be-dead deputy. 3. Tension builds as they attempt to find a)
anyone who’s alive, b) a car that works, and c) a way to contact the outside
world to call in the big guns. 4. The latter finally happens, you think the pros
will get to the bottom of things, it all goes horribly wrong, the evil
something-or-other reveals itself and its intensions which requires the help of... 5. the one man in the world who is wise to this terror that’s been lurking in the
depths, Peter O’Toole. Or, you know, his character.
It all sounds pretty horrible. And by all rights, it probably
should have been. But for some uncanny reason there is enough meat on this bone
and enough special sauce that it’s been drenched in to set it apart from the
million other dishes that are just like it.
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| Let's have a look-see here, shall we? |
It starts by bringing in one of the classiest thespians ever to
grace the screen. But it goes beyond that. For starters, Peter O’Toole’s
character doesn’t show up until roughly the half-way mark. So for the movie to
not have been unbearable up to that point must mean they did some other things
right.
What things you may ask? Well, I wouldn’t say the rest of
the cast was stellar, but it was certainly competant. Phantoms big pull for the
younger audience was the newly-minted leading man, Ben Affleck. To look back at
Affleck’s early career trajectory now is something of a head-scratcher. Here
was a man who had just won an Oscar(!) for co-writing the Good Will
Hunting screenplay. Yet his next movie after Phantoms would be Armageddon, a film which
time has not been kind to. His J-Lo/Gigli debacle was a few years away but I
think we can all agree it took ‘Fleck a few years to find his footing. He has
never really had the sheer acting chops that his mate Matt Damon does, and that
shows in Phantoms. Yet for all his inexperience at this point in his career, he
does a decent job of leading the show, even if he looks hilariously too young to be the town Sheriff, fiction or not.
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| Sheriff Babyface |
The other hot commodity that this movie cashed
in on was Rose McGowan. Well, when I say
hot commodity I mean she was a recognizable name that had been in a few decent
hits up to that point. Frankly, I’ve never been the biggest fan of her acting,
but I’ll give her points (and the writers) for not making her character
gratingly annoying, since she was the most obvious candidate for the classic
“stupid hysterical person”.
The real diamond in the rough that Phantoms managed to pull
from its bag of tricks was in casting Liev Schreiber. I took notice of this
actor from an early age and have been a big fan ever since. Even in
spectacularly bad films he still manages to come out cleanly. Which is not all
that surprising for an actor who can convincingly play Orson Welles in all his
narcissistic glory. Liev is the real surprise treat of the film and manages to unnerve
you more than any spooky special effect.
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| Zero context, still creepy. That's talent, people. |
On that note, I do want to give credit to the creators of
the film for not grasping at CGI straws they couldn’t afford. While this movie
came out at the beginning of what I call the Second Age of CGI – The Matrix was
only a year away – the filmmakers used it very sparingly. Which is good,
because on a small budget film like this bad CGI is the first thing to show
the cracks in the illusion, and often has the effect of making you laugh instead of jump. This film is
yet another example of how effective practical special effects can be at
creating tension or fright when used simply and properly.
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| Hello? Any creepy monsters out there? No? Ok, good. |
In fact, Phantoms seems to borrow heavily from the Jaws
principle of: Less Monster is More. Through virtually the whole film you never
see the whole thing – until the very end which almost invalidates my
previous point on CGI, but I digress – and the film is much stronger for the
restraint. Part of this wisdom can be laid at the feet of Dean Koontz himself,
who also wrote the screenplay. This actually brings up a point I think more
films could learn from: let the original authors at least have a go at writing
the screenplay for their own material. No one knows these worlds like the people who create them, and
it also deflates the common fanboy complaint that someone butchered the novel
in translation because they didn't get it.
The other person that deserves a lot of credit for this
movie being more creepy than craptacular is director Joe Chappelle. His
filmography is almost non-existent, but he’s a veteran TV director from such
shows as The Wire and, more importantly, Fringe. The Fringe connection is very
important, so I hope you’ll indulge me as I go full nerd on you for a minute:
WARNING: FULL NERD ALERT
1. Chappelle not only directed a number of Fringe episodes, he
also served as Executive Producer on the series. 2. Fringe was in many ways
indirectly (and even in a few winking references directly) the successor to The X-Files. 3. The X-Files was
one of the greatest spooky, sci-fi, thriller TV shows ever made and frequently
had storylines and monsters that fit Phantoms’ description to a tee. This is
why I call Phantoms the greatest feature-length episode of The X-Files never
made.
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| The X-Files: sentient black oil that takes possession of its host. Phantoms: sentient black goo that absorbs, then mimics its host. |
Honestly, if you go into this movie with that mentality
you’ll enjoy it much more than you might if you were expecting Invasion of the
Body Snatchers-level of fright. Heck, at 96 minutes, the movie is short enough
to be considered a TV series two-parter. The look is decent but the
camera work, the angles, the feel of
the movie is that of a really good episode from a series like
The Outer Limits or The X-Files instead of a shiny blockbuster.
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| Hey fellas! What's up? |
And Peter O’Toole’s appearance? It’s like a celebrity guest star during sweeps week. What’s funny is that, while this may have just been a job
to pay the bills for him, it actually looks like he’s having fun. Clearly he
knows this is not Shakespeare, but he gives it a go and makes the movie better
because of it.
As for the film’s monster I would imagine that this creation of
Koontz’s is primarily why the movie got made in the first place. While giant,
sentient, malevolent… somethings
lying in wait underground are not new to movies (or other media for that
matter) this film takes a bit of a deviation by having this particular sentient
goo become convinced that it is in fact, The Devil. That little twist makes the
beast that much more terrifying because if you believe you are
incarnate evil, you’re liable to do some pretty horrible things based on that
assumption.
That being said, this isn’t a movie that revels in buckets
of blood and stomach-churning levels of gore. In fact, overall it’s fairly tame
in what you actually see on screen, which again shows a certain wisdom on the
filmmakers part. As we all know, there's no horror like implied horror.
I wish more scary movies would get that idea through their
thick skulls.
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| Feel that implied horror. Feel it! |
This movie is currently available on Netflix Canada
Be forewarned, it's in... Full Screen!!
My Name is Rick Ames
and I Approve of This Movie
