A fair amount of my life just via being a pop culture junkie I’ve made many jokes at Dean Koontz’s expense suggesting he is the poor man’s Stephen King or “The K Mart Stephen King”. Recently though, I realized how unfair this was when I had never even read a Koontz book, so I sought out to find one that sounded interesting on audiobook and settled on Phantoms because I am obviously a genre film nerd and knew very well that they had adapted it into a film when I was a kid and could thus compare the two down the line. To my mild surprise, I did generally enjoy the book, I wouldn’t call it great or anything but it was a pretty solid chunk of somewhat Lovecraftian storytelling that was pretty engaging at most times. However, this is not the kind of review that compares the book to the film, I want to judge the film on its own merits and thus will try to limit how often I refer back to the book for some reason.
There are definitely flaws here. Despite being, on paper, the lead of the film and a medical doctor Joanna Going after the first like 20 minutes isn’t really given much of anything to do on screen except look concerned and react to Ben Affleck, which in breaking my rule just once I will say was not a problem with the character that came from the novel. Rose McGowan is consistently really terrible and part-wooden but also part-cartoony playing a character who is implied to be considerably younger than she actually was at the time, which is partially just because the character was just really badly written as stereotypical bratty, sarcastic teen but the performance does not elevate anything which is surprising coming two years after Scream and 1 before Jawbreaker: she knew how to act in better movies. Peter O’Toole does the absolute best with what he is given so maybe it should not go in this section of the review as I enjoyed him, but they don’t give him a lot of time to do the grand monologues of ancient evils that you’re expect from such a character and instead he’s just treated as source of short bursts of exposition whenever they need it, never making quite clear what his real scientific specialties or qualifications are so they can use him for whatever they want.
Likewise, the execution here isn’t always great. You get the feeling early on that the primary reason this film was chosen for adaptation is because you could save so much money on SFX if you are being taunted by an unseen enemy most of the film. While the practical FX doesn’t look bad, it is VERY sparingly used outside of very inexpensive black goop and often shrouded in shadow or quick edits or in one notable case being at the other side of a window, and the few times they actually seem to use some digital effects similarly get little actual time on screen although against just streetlamp lighting they look fine. The pacing is not great, with the first half of the film feeling very slow and just generally spooky as they walk around an empty (except corpses) town rather than ever really scary, and so little time is spent towards the end of the film figuring out the grand evil and how to maybe defeat it that it seems far too sudden and convenient and just pure plot contrivance.
However, I would absolutely classify the film as watchable. While never flashy, the whole film is very steadily directed with strong atmosphere and a good eye for framing shots by Joe Chappelle who along with many network procedurals is probably best known to fellow nerds as being a director of many great episodes of The Wire where he was also an exec producer, so despite his lack of success as a film director he knows what he’s doing. It looks pretty good consistently.
As the male lead, Ben Affleck absolutely exudes leadership under pressure and a common man’s approach to discovering the unknown, even if I wouldn’t call it one of his more interesting performances of his young career where at times he was much better. Liev Schreiber however absolutely steals the show as a creepy deputy cop in big glasses who starts losing his marbles not long after being introduced into the situation in a performance that is fairly subtle and focused on body language and facial expressions frequently despite the character having not much subtly at all in the writing. I have said it before and I will say it again: there has never been a film that has not been improved by having Liev Schreiber in the cast.
Did I enjoy the book more than the film? Absolutely, 100%. Do I totally understand why so many critics at the time thought the story translated poorly to film? Definitely. However, if you divorce yourself from its source material and just take it in as a late 90s horror film with up and coming actors (and one legend), can you have a fun, pulpy evening watching with it? Sure ya can, I’d probably watch it again even if maybe not for a long time.
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