Hey look, if slow-mo machine gun fire an unexplained random "supernatural stuff" is yer thing... then go for it.I got sucked in by the cast - but O'Toole is laughable and Affleck shows why he has is a success - good looks and good one liners - otherwise no talent.Shreiber is great, but after that this is a total big hollywood bit of nonsense. If you don't need a real plot and like 'explosions and stuff'.. its fer you.

Phantoms is probably better known for being a great punchline in Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back ("Affleck, you the bomb in Phantoms yo!") than it is as an actual movie. One of the many late 90s horror offering from Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Dimension Films, it was a box office flop when it hit theaters, and unlike several other Dimension releases from the same era, it hasn't become much of a cult favorite. Adapted by Dean Koontz from his novel of the same, Phantoms is Koontz's only screen writing credit. Reportedly, Koontz wasn't crazy about the final cut, blaming the editing in the postproduction process. While Koontz maybe right about the film's editing being messy, and while Phantoms is far from a great movie, I still kind of like it.Like most Dimension horror flicks, Phantoms has an amazing cast. Ben Affleck, Rose McGowan, and Liev Schreiber were regularly cast in Dimension Films, and it's not hard to see why. Their performances don't necessarily elevate the material, but they are a lot of fun to watch on screen, especially Affleck in a role he was especially too young for at the time of filming. Peter O'Toole is one of the most legendary actors who ever lived, and his presence definitely makes Phantoms seem classier than it would have been otherwise, although O'Toole plays his role straighter than I would have liked. Overall, the whole tone is a bit too serious considering how silly everything about the story is, but when Phantoms does show a sense of humor about its ridiculousness, the movie is at its best.Phantoms didn't have a huge budget, though visually it holds up better than a lot of the bigger budget offerings of the era. There seems to be very little CGI, and a lot of cool-looking practical special effects. Whether one likes or hates Phantoms, it's clear that there was hard work put into making the film look slick in a way very few horror flicks actually do. The cinematography looks great, the sets provide the film with the isolated atmosphere the story requires, and the directing is legitimately suspenseful in places. Phantoms is the type of film that almost never gets made anymore: an interesting R-rated horror flick not reliant on computers to make stuff look scary, and not reliant on twist ending after twist ending just for the sake of it. If made today, a movie like Phantoms would be either a limp PG-13 offering, or a much lower-budget, possibly found-footage VOD premiere not worthy of anyone's time.Unlike most horror movies made in the late 1990s and today, Phantoms wasn't made to launch a franchise. It was made to provide audiences with a 90 minutes' worth of scares and adrenaline, and more often than not, it succeeds at doing so. Phantoms may not even be close to the best the late 90s had to offer. With one more try to smooth things out in the editing room and a slightly firmer grasp on tone, Phantoms could have been a better movie, one that wouldn't be remembered just for being a joke (albeit an absolutely hilarious one) in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. As it is, the film is still fairly entertaining and worth checking out for genre fans. 6/10

Sadly the basis of the book was not translated very well to the big screen, now that special effects are much improved, it may be time to rekindle the dying embers of what should have been a great film.The taunting of the people in Snowfield, the arrival and setup of a cordon, the reason why Santa Mira police were there in the first place were all dismissed. Sadly in many ways, the whole point of the movie wasn't really realised because they were so focused on getting to the end that they seem to have entirely forgotten about the story, no suspense moments whatsoever, no what's gonna happen next..It was a major disappointment sadly because it didn't get the treatment it deserved; it should have been so much better, one can only hope that the script is redone; with a better understanding of the book and the nature of the story.

Dr. Jennifer Pailey (Joanna Going) and her younger sister Lisa (Rose McGowan) arrive in the remote town of Snowfield, Colorado, only to find the inhabitants either dead or missing, having fallen foul of a subterranean creature that believes itself to be a god. While searching the town for signs of life, the sisters meet local sheriff Bryce Hammond (Ben Affleck) and his deputies, but even with the lawmen's added firepower, survival looks unlikely—at least until the arrival of a team of government agents and their unlikely expert on the 'ancient evil', tabloid journalist Dr. Timothy Flyte (Peter O'Toole).Based on the novel by Dean Koontz (who also wrote the screenplay), Phantoms starts off very promisingly with the Pailey sisters' nail-biting search of the town's seemingly deserted buildings: a few delightfully grisly discoveries, some truly eerie sounds and the gradually dwindling daylight keep the level of tension high and the viewer right on the edge of their seat. An attack by a bizarre flying critter that leaves Deputy Stuart 'Stu' Wargle (Liev Schreiber) minus his face and several subsequent well-executed supernatural scares serve to heighten the horror.Unfortunately, with the introduction of O'Toole as Flyte, matters start to go downhill, the plot becoming more and more far fetched, eventually losing all sense of credibility during the inevitable showdown with the monster that involves the use of a handy experimental chemical that can break down the structure of oil—which just happens to be what the Lovecraftian creature is largely comprised of.However, despite its flaws, I'm happy to rate Phantoms a more than reasonable 6/10 simply for the wonderfully atmospheric first half, which surely served as inspiration for the successful 'Silent Hill' series of computer games.