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Phantoms is based on the novel of the same name by Dean R. Koontz.  Dr. Jennifer Pailey brings her younger sister Lisa to the small tourist town in the mountains she calls home as an escape from the normal grind.  They drive into town and see no one on the streets and everything is quiet.  Lisa expects to be in for a real nightmare of boredom and more boredom.  They arrive at the house and make their first grisly discover.  Dr. Pailey's housekeeper is dead on the kitchen floor.  She looks absolutely terrible even though it had to have happened very recently as there is soup bubbling on the stove.  The sisters go back out to the car and find that it will not work.  The police station is only a short distance so they walk it and the real nightmare begins.  Evil stalks the town and its hunger is nigh insatiable.

Phantoms is a good horror movie with a fairly quick pace, good tension, and if you have not read the novel some nice mystery going on.  A lot of the film seems re-tread of other movies but that is mostly due to the recentness of the film compared to the novel which predates (to my knowledge) most of the things the film seems to copy.  The directing on the film is good, the acting is above average with an especially good job from Liev Schreiber.  The special effects are good.  The film lacks a certain sense of horror and there are with a few exceptions very little in the scars department.  The atmosphere is good though and the sets and locations are solid if nothing truly amazing.  The movie does have a good musical score though.  There is very little lyrical soundtrack but what there is in the film is directly related to the scene and not a part of the background.

DVD NOTES: The Phantoms DVD is a plain vanilla disc with only chapter selection as its special features.  The video is good though it does show the tiniest bit of age.  The darks are dark and there isn't problem with artefacting.  The audio makes some good use out of the surround stage but not a lot.  It's good to have the movie on DVD but the disc isn't much to write about.

( Thank you for reading my review.
Bob Male)

All ideas, opinions, and information are from the reviewer and are not representative of any company or group involved with the creators and/or staff of the materials being reviewed.