OctoBOOOOOOY: Phantasm: OblIVion (1998)

Just as the turnaround between Phantasm III and Phantasm IV is the shortest in the overall series, it feels fitting to post these entries this close together.

Another reason to run these in close proximity – like part III, IV is the other entry in this series where I've found my opinion shifting with time. Unlike III, it doesn't bode quite as well here.

Phantasm OblIVion is ambitious, but also frustrating, even more once you learn about the backstory – this was born out of an idea by Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, who had worked on a script for what was to be an apocalyptic follow-up to the third movie. He and Coscarelli tried to get it off the ground, and one can see ghosts of it in the final movie, but they were having trouble securing funding. In the meantime, IV was made to set up that movie.

Under these circumstances it's worth warning – this movie's budget was scaled back. A lot. Where the previous two were working with budgets of several million, this was made for $650,000. And unlike in the first, where Coscarelli and crew worked around the lack of funds in some fairly inventive ways, the budget really shows here.

"Don't give me that look, boy. Carpooling to save production
money was YOUR idea!"

When I first saw this, I remember liking it quite a bit. At the time, I felt it was an improvement over the third movie, which, as I'd said before, I found somewhat off-putting with its attempts to go more for humor and adding in a capable-cum-murderous child to ride along with Reggie. Watching the two again so close together, I can't help but miss that road trip dynamic. Especially given how much of Reggie's time now seems devoted to one-off action sequences that, while sometimes fun, don't do much for the film as a whole.

One of the most frustrating cost-saving techniques is the decision to pad out the movie's run time with scenes deleted from the first film. It's an interesting idea on paper – presented here as things previously forgotten or simply as dream sequences, and the third film made some decent use of scenes from the first as occasional refreshers of points for newer viewers. The problem here is they don't add much in the way of new information to make them relevant or worth keeping, save for maybe the last flashback, which at least gives the film's finale some emotional heft.

From a deleted scene where the Tall Man talks Mike into freeing
him from a trap - note: this is the Tall Man's 'sincere' face.

A consequence of these two choices is that a large chunk of this movie just feels like it's spinning its wheels and not going anywhere. This isn't to say the earlier movies were packed with story, but they still had more of a semblance of direction and forward momentum than this, which only really seems to go anywhere when it's focused on Mike and his journey to learn more about the Tall Man.

That story winds up being where all of the interesting scenes of the movie occur. In true tradition for the series, a lot of it is delivering just enough information to keep the audience on the hook without telling everything and underwhelming them. The big standout being how this movie advances the mystery of the Tall Man – we see an origin of sorts (featuring a friendly Scrimm, closer to his real life personality, as the man whose shape will become the standard the Tall Men all assume) but it avoids the traditional pitfall of horror villain origin stories that often either over or undersell the 'why' of their monster - here, we only see the before and after, and the mystery of the middle is left to be speculated on. Instead of 'why' the focus becomes on 'what', and escalation continues to depict the Tall Man as the face of a larger, more sinister power.

I thought of far too many references to The Happening's
"Why you eyeing my lemon drink?" for this scene.

It's an idea that's even more interesting and frustrating when you know this movie's background and it becomes clear that Coscarelli was setting this up to really go someplace with Avary's script, and though it does get addressed in eventual final movie, it's hard not to feel a bit disappointed in what could have been.

After the last two sequels, I feel like I should have more opinions, but the simple fact is, there's really only so much that can be said. The effects work is decent for the movie, particularly given the low cost (Nicotero and Kurtzman had KNB come back to work on this as a favor) but compared to II and III, they can only do just so much. The cast do what they can with their roles, with Baldwin in particular getting more to do this time, and Scrimm getting the chance to show some more range.

One of the little joys of this movie - Almost 20 years later,
and Scrimm can still do his villainous strut.

The problem is, these individual pieces never really feel like they come together. There's good parts to this movie, but thanks to the fact it was basically made for figurative couch change as a prologue for something bigger that never came to be, it never feels like the cohesive movie it could have been.

I can't call this is an “avoid at all costs” movie, because there are salvageable aspects. It's more accurate to say “temper your expectations.” It helps if you're coming into it now- you know there's more to come, as opposed to the close to two decades where, as far as fans could tell, this was it. Had this stayed the final entry in the series, I feel like I'd be more camped on the 'frustrated' sign of the line instead of 'disappointed'.

Another of the little joys - Reggie suiting up for the final showdown
in what can only be described as 'ice cream commando' mode.

Of course, it would be another eighteen years before we finally got the fifth and final movie, Ravager. This Halloween, this project comes to a close with the finale that was almost forty years in the making.