Mr Iwo Scarlet wrote in to discuss what he saw at a test screening of PHANTOMS. My father happened to love the script to this film (I have yet to read it), but Mr Iwo Scarlet seems to of had a "Bad" time with the film. This is a single opinion, and until I have more reviews, well I can not say what a "consensus" is, right now we just have an individual's opinion. Any other Secuacus residents willing to share their opinions? WARNING THEIR ARE SPOILERS PRESENT IN THIS REVIEW!!!! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!!!!
I was unlucky enough to attend a test screenings of PHANTOMS in Secuacus, N.J. last night. This is the latest offering from Dimension, based (so they say) on the novel by Dean Koontz, with a screenplay allegedly by Koontz himself. Having never read the book, I say this simply because I cannot believe that any writer would do such a careless job on their own piece of material. Not even Stephen King, who's done some real disservices to his own work, has done such a poor job adapting himself. I heard that all creative decisions had to go through Koontz first, due to his dislike of previous adaptations of his work, such as HIDEAWAY and SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT. If you're reading this, Dean, I liked those films better. A LOT better.
The plot concerns two sisters (the lovely Joanna Going and the equally lovely Rose McGowan) who return to their small Colorado town to discover that everyone is dead. This allows for a rather spooky and atmospheric opening ten minutes, with the two running all over town, looking for survivors and finding only dead bodies instead. But things almost start going instantly downhill when other characters are introduced. Three cops (two of whom are played by CHASING AMY's Ben Afflick and SCREAM's Liv Schrieber) come onto the scene, and the film begins to take a nosedive into stupidity. Schrieber character acts like a total jerk only because it serves the purpose of the plot, and Afflick is given about three lines of character development (which is about the norm for this picture). While Schrieber takes obvious delight in his role and is therefore fun to watch, Afflick, an otherwise likable actor, is seriously miscast. He's no more a cop than you are, Harry (no offense), making all of his cop acts and heroics seriously uneffective.
Things are supposed to pick up when Peter O'Toole comes onto the screen, and while O'Toole is one of my favorite actors and always a joy to watch, seeing him have to spout out scientific and theological gibberish seems so totally beyond him that it becomes difficult to see how far he's sank. All I could keep saying to myself was "From LAWRENCE OF ARABIA to this". He has only one good scene in the picture near the end, when he confronts to the evil being behind it all, but that moment doesn't last very long, and when a giant (but still not complete) monster morphs itself in front of him, everything sinks back down to where it was before.
Now, I haven't been giving away too much away about the actual plot of the film, and the reason for that is simple: THERE ISN'T ONE. Once we discover just _what_ the thing is, it's explained to us using the "intellectual approach", in order to make it sound intelligent. Just as soon as that happens, Afflick says, "Explain it to me in plain English!", and even though they stop to explain everything in layman's terms, the damn thing STILL doesn't make any sense! The exact nature of the monster is so damn confusing, I had to have someone explain it to me after the movie. And I rarely, if ever, get confused at the movies. But the rest of the film is so bloody and blatently obvious. There are so many set-ups for scares and fake scares that it even becomes insulting after a while, as if they really expect you fall for the same old bullshit again and again.
Now, the film (which I had read a few days prior was set for an October 24th release, but I don't think so anymore) was still in a rough cut stage. Some of the music and sound effects were temp and not all of the FX were done. It ran about 97 minutes, but it felt like it was longer. When it concerns itself with horror/suspense scenes, the film moves rather briskly. But when everything stops and people talk, it slows down. The director was Joe Chappelle, the hack who gave us HALLOWEEN 6, but he has learned to direct somewhat since that clunker. This one has a few effective moments, which is a lot more than his last film did. He and the producer were in attendance at the screening, so they were there to hear all the uninentional laughter and boos at the end (one or two people did applaud, though). Miramax/Dimension heads Bob & Harvey Weinstein were also there, and I wanted to take the opportunity to talk to them afterwards, but they were surrounded by flunkies & yes-men, so I couldn't, but if they read your page like most wise movie people do, then I'd like to say to them now what I wanted to say then: Stop making horror films. Stop ruining this genre with your moronic sequels and adaptations. Don't try to take too much credit for SCREAM, because that was a good script to begins with. THIS is the typical lowest common denominator Dimension horror flick designed to appeal soley to dumb people and pre-teens. You have done this great genre more of a disservice than anything else with your all too hands-on approach. There are really talented film-makers who know this genre inside and out who could deliver great film after great film (like George A. Romero and Joe Dante) if only given the chance and you guys decide to give jobs to buttkissers like Chappelle and Ole Bornedalle (hey, where's NIGHTWATCH, huh?). Continue to make films like PHANTOMS and all the SCREAMs in the world aren't going to make a lick of difference.
