Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

GL84 Arriving in a small Colorado town, sisters visiting find the whole area's disappearance to be the work of a race of long-dormant creatures looking to spread the word of their existence to the rest of the world and must rely on a famous scientist to help stop them from leaving.This was an overall solid creature feature. What works most in the film is its spectacular first-half which is a great idea to have such a powerful opening to the film, allowing for the opportunity for a lot of fun to this one. The deserted streets through the town are just simply eerie as the silence and desolation from the walk- through is pretty spine-chilling, while the fact that there's a sinister feeling with the discovery of the bodies and the feeling that there's an unseen presence watching everything going on gives these scenes an added feeling of doom. There's plenty of suspenseful scenes in this as well as there are simply tons of great scenes in the hotel that really stand-out to a big degree. The scenes with the strange tentacles breaking through the walls to launch attacks make for a fine time, and there's the great attack in the kitchen that is home to some of the biggest shocks in the film. The second half does have one memorable sequence, where the creature attacks a military team inside a church with the eerie lighting making the entire thing quite creepy, is blessed with a large amount of kills in here and some pretty great action pieces in here where it begins throwing them around and possessing others in order to turn their weaponry on the others gives this one plenty to like as well. The last big plus is that by keeping it an ongoing mystery as to what's the cause of the disappearances around town, there's a lot of suspense as to what the eventual source actually is making its appearance a nice shock. These are all the points that favor it as there wasn't a whole lot wrong with this one. The biggest flaw is that there's a huge tonal shift halfway through the film that really undermines a lot of these actions significantly. The beginning is a beautifully construed suspense tale that is an eerie, creepy and completely realistic depiction of a mysterious creature preying upon the town, yet the curve thrown as it goes into a normal science fiction film, complete with military scientists, cover-ups and a complete behavior shift from the creature itself is a weird shift. On more than one occasion, it has ample opportunity to attack and get to the characters, yet it lets them go simply for the reason that it wants its existence known. While that in itself doesn't work as a motive, completely demystifying the creature, that it would suddenly stop taking victims despite earlier on actually going to great lengths to get them seems a little off. Beyond one massacre scene that really works, it leaves the creature out of the spotlight and focuses on the hunt to discover what it is, and this is a little hard to swallow following what came before. This shift in tone is what really kills the film.Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

Stringer Bill Perhaps the best example of movie being better than the book. The most effective parts of the movie are the small, vivid, almost unbearably poignant human moments. Extras were clearly the worst part of the film. There is a scene were two extras look like they are going to attack the actors for no reason.Soundtrack doesn't seem to be as timeless as the film itself Part Platoon part Blade Runner. It is a fast paced thriller, that will throw on the breaks at the appropriate time. Liev Schreiber gave the performance of his career putting him in the elite stratosphere of Bogart and Don Baker. Although not a fan Ben Affleck; I found his performance to be most explosive.

BA_Harrison 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.

LeonLouisRicci If you have never read a Dean Koontz Horror Novel this Movie will likely not inspire such wantings. Scripted by the Book's Author this adaptation of his own work is full of it. Full of clichés, uninspired Acting, mediocre SFX, unfunny funny lines and references (Patsy Cline's I Fall to Pieces is heard while you see, you guessed it), well that's enough, but there's more.The Cast seems to be standing around a lot with blank stares waiting for someone, anyone, to say Action, or something. Speaking of Action, early on there is a Scene that telegraphs just how lame and misdirected this is. A "Thing" shows up and we have our three Leads, standing shoulder to shoulder pumping hundreds of bullets at a window. It looks like something out of completely different Movie, or Genre for that matter.So the warning comes early, and it is right on. Nothing that happens after-wards is remotely scary, interesting, or worth your time. This is not the worst Horror/Sci-Fi Movie ever made but it tries really hard to be a contender.