Phantoms
Contrary to popular belief, Affleck is not, in fact, da bomb in Phantoms. He is only miscast. He looks barely old enough to shave, let alone be a small town sheriff with FBI experience. And, oh yes, he’s haunted by a child he mistakenly killed, although Affleck doesn’t even come close to having the gravity to pull that little gem off. Almost none of the cast, in fact, has the gravity, or the chops, or any of the actual acting skills necessary to pull off a movie as ill-conceived as this one, with two notable exceptions. But I’ll get to that. Phantoms is based on a book by Dean Koontz, who also wrote the screenplay. I read the book back in middle school and enjoyed it. Something tells me if I were to reread it, I wouldn’t like it quite as much.
Phantoms begins with two sisters traveling into the Colorado mountains. The older sister wants to get the younger one out of LA and into some good ol’ fashioned country livin’ to help reform her wicked ways, information of which is given to us quickly and obviously through dialogue reeking of exposition. The older one is played by Joanna Going, who defines the word mediocrity, and the younger by Rose McGowan, who can’t quite aspire to even that low mark. As they enter the town of Snowfield they discover something is afoot. All the residents are missing, dead bodies are found here and there, and there is...something around them, but what? Really, even at this early stage it’s hard to care, because the movie is so eager to be done with we’re given virtually nothing in the way of build up, or character, or much of a story. After some initial quick cut seen-from-a-mile-away scares, they bump into Affleck and his deputy sheriffs and go through a bit more.
One deputy has about a minor a presence as a character could possibly have in a film before he is killed off. The other is played by Liev Schrieber. It’s not quite his best performance, and not quite one that will be put on his reel, but it reminds us of Schrieber, who is probably the most underappreciated actor of his generation. He didn’t quite knock my socks off here, but at least he’s got personality, which is more than can be said for the rest of the vanilla cast. Then, of course, he’s killed off. He has some more appearances later on, singing “I Fall to Pieces” in one of those labored attempts to make a villain even creepier by giving him an innocuous song, but for all intents and purposes, once he’s gone, so are we.
The movie then makes the same mistake the book does, by cutting away from the town and into regular civilization to introduce an old “paleo-biologist,” Timothy Flyte, who just may hold the answers as to what is killing people in Snowfield. He’s played by Peter O’Toole, and O’Toole appropriately hams it up a bit because he knows what kind of movie he’s in, but it still made me feel awkward to watch so great an actor in such shit as this. He was Lawrence of Arabia, fer Chrissakes! Anyway, he’s hustled off to Snowfield in clumsily edited sequences and he arrives with a whole damn fleet of army guys who are just salivating to be killed off.
This movie is cliche and crappy. One of the main problems is that it follows the book too closely. Koontz can get away with a lot of his loopier ideas because he fills pages and pages with background and tension filler and characterization, and when we read it our minds picture it the way we want to, so it can be as creepy as we can make it. What takes twenty pages in the book takes two seconds in the movie, and we feel nothing.
Some of the sound editing is so poor we can tell Ben Affleck is talking to someone on a set. There’s also the problem that the sets all look like sets, the whole thing is obviously written, complete with last minute, third act, way too convenient anti-bad-guy poison to save the day, and the ending can be seen from about thirty miles away. Since you have already skipped this crap when it came out in theaters in 1998, I don’t have to tell you to skip it again. Just please continue to not rent it, which most of you have already chosen to do. Thank you.
Phantoms begins with two sisters traveling into the Colorado mountains. The older sister wants to get the younger one out of LA and into some good ol’ fashioned country livin’ to help reform her wicked ways, information of which is given to us quickly and obviously through dialogue reeking of exposition. The older one is played by Joanna Going, who defines the word mediocrity, and the younger by Rose McGowan, who can’t quite aspire to even that low mark. As they enter the town of Snowfield they discover something is afoot. All the residents are missing, dead bodies are found here and there, and there is...something around them, but what? Really, even at this early stage it’s hard to care, because the movie is so eager to be done with we’re given virtually nothing in the way of build up, or character, or much of a story. After some initial quick cut seen-from-a-mile-away scares, they bump into Affleck and his deputy sheriffs and go through a bit more.
One deputy has about a minor a presence as a character could possibly have in a film before he is killed off. The other is played by Liev Schrieber. It’s not quite his best performance, and not quite one that will be put on his reel, but it reminds us of Schrieber, who is probably the most underappreciated actor of his generation. He didn’t quite knock my socks off here, but at least he’s got personality, which is more than can be said for the rest of the vanilla cast. Then, of course, he’s killed off. He has some more appearances later on, singing “I Fall to Pieces” in one of those labored attempts to make a villain even creepier by giving him an innocuous song, but for all intents and purposes, once he’s gone, so are we.
The movie then makes the same mistake the book does, by cutting away from the town and into regular civilization to introduce an old “paleo-biologist,” Timothy Flyte, who just may hold the answers as to what is killing people in Snowfield. He’s played by Peter O’Toole, and O’Toole appropriately hams it up a bit because he knows what kind of movie he’s in, but it still made me feel awkward to watch so great an actor in such shit as this. He was Lawrence of Arabia, fer Chrissakes! Anyway, he’s hustled off to Snowfield in clumsily edited sequences and he arrives with a whole damn fleet of army guys who are just salivating to be killed off.
This movie is cliche and crappy. One of the main problems is that it follows the book too closely. Koontz can get away with a lot of his loopier ideas because he fills pages and pages with background and tension filler and characterization, and when we read it our minds picture it the way we want to, so it can be as creepy as we can make it. What takes twenty pages in the book takes two seconds in the movie, and we feel nothing.
Some of the sound editing is so poor we can tell Ben Affleck is talking to someone on a set. There’s also the problem that the sets all look like sets, the whole thing is obviously written, complete with last minute, third act, way too convenient anti-bad-guy poison to save the day, and the ending can be seen from about thirty miles away. Since you have already skipped this crap when it came out in theaters in 1998, I don’t have to tell you to skip it again. Just please continue to not rent it, which most of you have already chosen to do. Thank you.