Destroying a good idea... (contains SPOILERS) | ryuuzaki's Blog

SPOILERS lie below...

Continuing my pre-Halloween viewing of low-budget horror films, I rewatched Phantoms today.  I hadn't seen that film for years and all I could remember was that it was a Silent Hill-esque deserted town affair and featured an attack by a giant moth.  Although mildly entertaining in places, the film irked me.  It's a prime example of how potentially good ideas can be ruined by poor pacing.

I'm not going to review Phantoms because it really isn't worth the effort.  It's basically a film about two women who drive into a town to discover that all the townsfolk are either dead or missing.  They're then forced to survive (along with the town's sheriff) and a few others as things get increasingly weird.

Basically, it becomes apparent that it is a large creature that is to blame for everything.  This creature is like a cross between the monsters featured in The Thing, It and At the Mountains of Madness.  It's a shapeless monstrosity that has lived beneath the surface of the Earth for centuries and is responsible for all of the unexplained mass-disappearances such as the death of the dinosaurs and Roanoke. 

It also absorbs knowledge from the creatures that it eats, and so knows everything that its victims does.  This has made it self-aware.  As humans view animals as inferior; it holds the same perspect of the human race.  We are either "cattle" for the slaughter, or pets for its own amusement.  It has also come to believe that it is Satan and its arrogance becomes its undoing as it believes that (as a God) it cannot be destroyed.

This, I think, is quite an intriguing idea for a creature in a movie.  However, it is woefully under-used.  The major problem with Phantoms, is that it is so poorly paced that it is boring.  There are a few scenes that, in any other film, would be shocking.  The creature (called the Ancient Evil) loves to torture its pets.  Early on there are some great horror scenes, such as a one in a bakery, that are really quite fun.  However, there is no build-up at all.  The two main characters discover the town is deserted within the first five minutes of the movie.  After this, they switch between locations so quickly that there is absolutely no time for tension to build.  In turn, there is also no time for any characterization.  The two women are, simply, sisters.  Ben Affleck's character has a little 'quirk' in the fact that he once accidentally shot a small child but other than this is just a typical (albeit strangely young) town sheriff.  Liev Schreiber's character is randomly crazy, but it's not explained why (or how he's gotten a job as a deputy despite being so unstable) leading me to assume that he is just an utter bastard.  Things are made worse by the fact that none of this characters have much personality and so I didn't especially care whether they lived or died.

Conversely, the second half of the movie is far too slow.  Once Peter O'Toole's character arrives in the town we are treated to a couple of long, boring scenes in which the surviving characters decide to sit and discuss the nature of the creature.  The Ancient Evil does communicate with them during this, and I hoped this would lead to some kind of banter with it, much in the vein of Sphere, but no.  The creature merely expressed a desire for the world to embrace it as the Devil and our heroes conveniently had the means by which to kill it and swiftly do so.

I already expressed that this movie was similar to The Thing, It and Sphere (with elements of Alien thrown in for good measure).  All of these are enjoyable films that I would have much rather been watching.  These films are good for a reason.  They pace themselves well interspersing character development and relevant filling with action.  Phantoms unfortunately failed the pacing 101 exam and thus wasted some interesting ideas and interesting moments by just being too boring overall.

Anyway, my stock of Halloween movies left for the next week includes Crooked House, Braindead and Phantasm so at least I have some enjoyable stuff left for my favourite week of the year.