Phantoms (1998)

Originally Written 

Monday, April 9, 2007

Phantoms has two things against it: 1) it’s a horror film and 2) it stars Ben Affleck.  I'm not a huge horror buff and I think Ben Affleck is the worst actor in the world, but with that said shame on me for actually liking this!  In my opinion Phantoms might be Ben Affleck’s best film, which isn't saying much, but I saw this around the time it first came out and something stuck with me, making me want to revisit it again almost 10 years later.
 

Jennifer Pailey is on her way home with her troubled sister, she hopes that a few months in a small mountain town might help bring her sister out of the horrors of city life.  Sadly she's unaware that she's about to put her sister in more danger than she could never dream of facing in the city.  When the two arrive in town they discover nothing but a deserted skeleton of what used to be a population of 400.

 

The girls soon discover the shocking truth as they stumble upon corpses of once loved friends and towns folk, some strangely disfigured others completely mutilated.  The girls soon run into Sheriff Bryce Hammond (Ben Affleck) and a few of his men who came to check on a disturbing call they received from the town's sheriff.  They arrive at the conclusion that the killer must still be around, but soon discover they aren't dealing with any normal killer.
 

The film begins to take a slightly weird turn when they discover who the killer really is.  It seems the only way to escape the town alive is to attempt and contact the outside world and bring in a man known as Dr. Timothy Flyte, a name they find written on the mirror of a windowless room locked from the inside!
 

Another reviewer took the words right out of my mouth when they stated this was a "three-quarter film".  75% of the film is quite good, until the remaining 25% goes off on a bizarre tangent and makes you feel like you're watching another movie.  What I liked about Phantoms is it gets right into the thick of it.  The characters are in the town and discovering dead bodies 3 minutes in, there's no useless conversations or banter for 15 minutes as so many other horror films seem to make you suffer through.  I also thought the first half was very suspenseful and the addition of the song "I Fall To Pieces" played in the hotel while the group was searching the rooms was a nice touch.  That was what I remembered being scared of when I was a kid and first saw this.
 

The acting is nothing great, Ben Affleck is corny as always but at least he's in a genre were his "talent" actually works well.  Although it’s quite a stretch to believe that Affleck is a Sheriff, who used to be an FBI agent and attended Harvard.  The last 30 minutes is where the plot takes a sharp 180 turn, starting out as a horror and ending up as a science fiction film.  I felt like I was watching an episode of the Twilight Zone and then suddenly watching some strange Sci-Fi Channel original, there's no real transition between the two.
 

In the end, if I can stomach Affleck for an hour and a half then Phantoms isn't a horrible film.  It's worth a watch if your interested and I still find it pretty memorable so many years later.  It must have been the song and also the kid's voice coming from the drain pipes, both of those were classic creepy moments. 

6/10