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Phantoms
This film hits hard and it hits fast. And when I mean fast, I mean that we're seeing dead bodies left and right just ten minutes into the film, and the mystery takes off from there. Unfortunately, it loses steam before it ever had a chance to deliver a knockout blow. However, I was thoroughly intrigued by a concept presented in this film (and the book) which is: if a certain kind of worm learns how to solve a maze, and then you grind it up and feed it to other worms, the other worms will then be able to negotiate the maze on their first try. Now apply this to a organic ingesting (or more accurate, human ingesting) blob which operates in the same fashion...that is, digest a human, absorb its knowledge. Now that's something interesting. Phantoms is a bit of sci-fi wrapped up in a good fashioned horror setting, and I must say I found that despite some roles being miscast and the last hour of the movie being somewhat formulaic, I would still watch this film again. The story concerns the peaceful town of Snowfield, Colorado where something evil has wiped out the community. Two vacationing sisters, arrive in Snowfield to find almost everyone's gone missing. The exceptions are a few poor sods the sisters stumble upon who met a very gruesome death. The sisters meet up with sheriff of a neighboring town and his deputies and together they try to unravel the mystery until a one time scientist now hack author, who is linked to the mysteries, arrives with a team of hazmat scientists to deal with an ancient horror lying in wait beneath the town. Now, the reasons this is included in the listings is because of a few major things: we have some great "monster" sequences such as a 'mi-go like' beast that attacks at the window until shot dead, Liev Schreiber mutating into a really cool creature (such as the Blair creature from The Thing), and a supernatural and now seemingly sentient being dwelling beneath a mountain town, awaiting its time to rise to the surface. Plus, the aforementioned concept of absorbtion of your food's thoughts and feelings. Hmm, sounds pretty mythos-esque to me. Or at least enough for a mention here. And some scenes are just unforgetable...such as when they discover a curious pile of stuff: Watches, glasses, ballpoints, pacemakers in front of an altar. At first they think it's an offering to the Virgin Mary. But no: ``That's not an offering. Those are undigested remains.'' Now that's memorable. This is based
off of the book by the same name written by Dean Koontz, and
he himself wrote the screenplay for this movie. phantoms1.wav The sisters return home only to discover the dead body of their parents housekeeper. phantoms3.wav The group ponders a message left on a mirror in a locked, windowless room. phantoms4.wav The group stumbles upon a very gruesome discovery...leftovers from a feeding. phantoms5.wav Is that a Mi-Go at your window?
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$20.99 
$12.99