Phantoms
USA 1998. Director: Joe Chapelle
Cast: Rose McGowan, Joanna Going, Ben Affleck, Peter O'Toole
The best Dean Koontz adaption ever made! What does that say us exactly? Well, we've had Watchers, Watchers 2, Servants of Twilight, Watchers 3... not much of a competition. But Phantoms is a relief in every aspect and better than many Stephen King movies. Mainly because it is what other (most) horror movies isn't these days. Scary. Or at least it tries to be. And it succeeds because it builds atmosphere the old-fashioned way, with a clever story, carefully edited for maximum spookiness. Perhaps it gets a little carried away towards the end, but that's okey too.

Two sisters, Rose McGowan (Scream) and Joanna Going, arrives to Snowfield, a little small town in Colorado. Only there's nobody there. The whole town is empty. Except for a handful of dead and mutilated bodies. The sisters try to get away, but the car collapses just as a couple of young sheriffs arrives to resque (Affleck and Schreider). They try to make radio contact with someone outside and soon the town is filled with soldiers and goverment officials lead by nutty professor Dr. Timothy Flyte (Peter O'Toole). Flyte soon discovers who or rather what has come to visit Snowfiled. It's the "ancient enemy", as he calls it. A creature from within the earth who sucks the conscience out of humans, adapting their knowledge, including people's apprehension of it as a God. Now this ancient enemy has arrived to Snowfield thinking it's a God that can't be stopped.

The first half, with the characters wandering the empty streets and jumping at every shadow, is very very good. It reminded at least me of one my all-time favorite sf-movies, The Andromeda Strain, in its way to build a slow and claustrophibic atmosphere. The characters are well played by its star cast, but it's really Peter O'Toole who steals the show in the second half. It's nice to see an old veteran really go for it, instead of just doing a tired Donald Pleasence routine. Otherwise the second half isn't as interesting as what preceded it and the revelation of the ancient creature at the end comes as a slight disappointment. Here we have spent an entire film with an expectant O'Toole raving and drooling about this unstoppable force as old as Earth, and then when we finally see it it's just a big piece of computer-animated dust. Not even a Blob. Apart from that Phantoms is a well written and well paced old-fashioned monster movie, guaranteed to satisfy fans of the genre and Peter O'Toole.

© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.