Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, we're continuing the "Phantasm" series by taking a look at the fourth entry that came out in 1998. That movie is "Phantasm IV: Oblivion".
Now, if I had to summarize my overall thoughts on the "Phantasm" series up till this point, I would say that they have been really interesting. Mind you, when I say that, I am not saying that they're great movies or anything, but I still do enjoy them and I still want to see where they go with this series.
That said, though, I do need to confess something. I've noticed that with each movie that we've gone through, the quality of the writing in these movie has been slowly declining. Now again, I am not saying that these movies have been bad or anything, in fact, I was still able to recommend the two prior movies if you enjoyed the first one. It's just that I've been noticing more and more issues when it comes to the writing in these particular movies, and I fear that I may find more issues here once I start watching this fourth movie.
Now I'm hoping that I'm wrong here. I would love for this 4th movie to exceed my expectations and be amazing. However, I also have to keep in mind that when it comes to sequels, preferably horror movie sequels, they usually start to really go down in quality by the 4th entry. A great example would be the 4th "Wishmaster" movie, AKA "Wishmaster: The Prophecy Fulfilled". That film was so bad that it pretty much killed that entire franchise. Thankfully, at least with the "Phantasm" series, it did get a 5th movie, however, I'll get more into that after I get through this one first.
So with all this in mind, I'm hoping for this one to be really good. And the only way I am gonna find out if this thing is any good at all, is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Phantasm IV: Oblivion".
13 minutes later
OK, I have a question about something. So, Reggie is now on his own while Jody is now telling him that he should continue looking for Mike. That's fine and everything, but what exactly happened to Tim? The kid that was with Reggie in the previous movie. Did he actually end up getting killed by the Tall Man or something? Based on the ending of the previous movie, it *seems* like that might be the case, but it's still very vague, given that all of these movies have had these cliffhanger endings where the characters still lived in the sequels. I'm hoping that it gets explained at some point, but it just seems kinda messed up to leave Tim's status the way it is now, you know what I mean?
8 minutes later
OK well, that was kinda messed up. I've never seen one of these reanimated corpses spill out their yellow blood into Reggie's mouth like that. I'm not even sure if I should even call it blood at this point, but still, it was definitely messed up. And I definitely would not want someone's yellow blood being splurged into my mouth like that.
13 minutes later
All right, I have a big question here, and it's something I've been wondering about for a while now. So, up until this point, we've been seeing scenes of Mike as a young boy again. And it seems like this is the same actor that was in the first movie. So my question is that are all these scenes that we've been seeing are all deleted scenes from the first movie? I'm asking this, because I genuinely don't believe that they hired new actors to play Mike, Jody, or even the Tall Man for these particular scenes. I genuinely believe that they were just using scenes that didn't make the cut from the first movie and tried to implement them in this movie somehow. So it makes me curious as to how many scenes there were that they filmed, but originally never made the cut? I'm really curious about that now.
20 minutes later
So, guys, I was hoping I wouldn't have to ask this, especially now that we're on the 4th entry of this series, but is anything interesting gonna happen in this movie? Because, I'm gonna tell you, guys, right now, the pacing in this movie has become rather glacial. And it's sad for me to ask this because the previous "Phantasm" movies, for all the flaws that they've had, still made me interested to see where they were gonna go. But this one is not really doing it for me for some reason. I'm hoping the next half hour or so will get more interesting, but as of right now, the pacing in this movie is slowly starting to kill it for me.
6 minutes later
Well...that's certainly creative-looking. I didn't think I'd get to see metal sphere boobs on a woman in a "Phantasm" movie, but I did. And...well, again, it's certainly creative. I'll say that much.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Phantasm IV: Oblivion". Let me go ahead shut the movie off here...OK. Hmm...well, I called it. I said earlier that I kept finding more problems with the writing in these "Phantasm" movies, and I feared that I would find more of those problems if I watched this movie. And yeah, I did. I was hoping not to, but just based on what I watched, I can easily say that this is, by far, the weakest entry in the entire "Phantasm" series. Gosh, this was just massively disappointing.
Let's just get into this by talking about the movie itself. I'm gonna start with writing. And I want to start off by confirming something I had asked earlier, in which if this movie was actually using deleted footage that never made it in the first movie. And that is actually true. Now admittedly, I don't know how much old footage was used in this movie, because I wasn't able to find any information on that. But regardless, they were able to use it in a way to fill in gaps and to also correlate with how the movie is being written here. And I will say that it does kinda work, to a degree. However, the problem is that it feels like it almost overtakes about half of the entire movie. And what we have here that isn't old unused footage feels like it really doesn't go much of anywhere. I'll get more into this in a second, but to me, it just feels like the movie doesn't really feel like a direct sequel. It just feels more like an in-between prequel/sequel movie that mostly just tries to fill in gaps that may feel somewhat unnecessary. Again, I do like how they were able to use unused footage that never made it into the first movie, but I feel like it doesn't really advance much of the actual story that we got here.
Speaking of which, let's talk about the actual story we got here for this movie. Now, setting aside unused footage and everything, the story here really is kind of a rehash of what was pulled off in the previous movie. Once again, Mike is on his own, as he tries to outwit the Tall Man in order to not become one of his victims. And to do this, he actually is able to travel through these dimension poles in Death Valley, and is able to travel back in time to the past to where he comes across the Tall Man before he became evil. And he actually had a name too, in which he was called Jebediah Morningside. In which it's here, we're finally able to get more of a backstory on the guy himself. Which is admittedly cool to see, however, I feel like, being that we're on the fourth entry now, it just feels like a situation of too little too late. I would have love to seen more of this within the first or second movie. Though to be fair, they did kinda scratched the surface of that in the first movie. But to have it here now, at this juncture of the franchise, seems like a bit of desperation to me. Now mind you, the backstory for the Tall Man is perfectly fine and all. It just feels like, to me anyway, that they could've pulled this off a bit more sooner is what I'm trying to get at.
Now since I just finished talking about the Tall Man's backstory, let's actually get more into the characters. Mike really hasn't changed all that much, apart from acting somewhat monotone throughout the movie. Although to be fair, I can kinda understand his position, seeing as how long he's been being chased and all. And as for Reggie, well, his character honestly feels like it serves no purpose in this movie whatsoever. And I'm not kidding about that either, guys, because they are rehashing the same kind of shit they did in the second movie with him, in which it's basically just another road trip featuring mainly him. Well, he does end up meeting a woman named Jennifer here, but she really plays almost no part in this movie. And I feel like if you cut her out of the movie entirely, you wouldn't be missing a thing with her around. But aside from her, Reggie, like I said, just does the same kind of shit here. And it's to a point where I feel like Don Coscarelli, who also wrote this movie, has no idea on what to do with Reggie at all. I feel like he's only here because he's Mike's friend and guardian. But aside from that, any advancements on his character is completely non-existent here.
And that brings me to one of the biggest problems with this movie as a whole, which would be the film's pacing. This thing feels incredibly slow. In fact, I'd say it's much slower here than the how second movie was. At least there, when that movie picked up, it picked up pretty quickly and got interesting again. Here though, there's very few bits of interest that happen in this movie, to which it ends up becoming boring. I'd never thought I'd say that about a "Phantasm" film, but this thing almost felt fucking boring to watch! And mind you, the movie's only about 90 minutes long, but it honestly felt it went on for almost 2 hours long instead. And it brings me back to the unused footage, because I feel like, when this movie was being made, they didn't have enough original footage to fill in the necessary material to make it a feature length film, so they had to fill in enough of what wasn't used in the first movie and insert here so that they could get enough material in order to make the film feel feature length. Now mind you, this is just me theorizing here, so I could be totally wrong about that part. But that's what it felt like to me when watching this movie, it just felt longer than it should of been.
So yeah, guys, the writing here has definitely gone down in quality. Now that being said, I hesitate to call this a "bad" movie, it's just not all that impressive with it's lackluster writing. That being said, though, I can say that the acting is still rather good for the most part. Everybody here worked with what they could work with. Mind you now, the acting isn't great, aside from Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm still putting on great performances. But still though, I wouldn't say that the acting from the rest of the cast was awful or anything, it was just decent for most part.
Special effects are also pretty good, too. This is one thing I can definitely say about the special effects is that, barring the first film, they've always stayed consistent with each movie and I'm glad to see that same amount of consistency here. There is one bit of usage for CG in this movie, and that is at the very beginning of the movie where you get to see a bunch of metal spheres flying in one large group together. It's pretty good stuff, even by the standards of 1998. The practical effects are also good, too. Sadly, there isn't any killing involving a metal sphere here, which is actually really disappointing when you really think about it, but the effects involving them still look good. So I can at least say that much.
Camerawork here is pretty good. The lighting is lit very well. The sound-mix here is perfectly fine. And the score here is also decent, too. It's nothing special, but still very atmospheric when it wants to be.
Ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Phantasm IV: Oblivion"? Um...well, if you've followed the previous 3 movies, and you enjoyed them, then you'll probably find something to like here as well. However, I personally wasn't able to find much enjoyment out of this 4th installment. I really wanted to be proven wrong and hope that this movie was gonna be amazing. But sometimes, you can be totally right on your first assumption. This movie's quality in writing definitely declined, and I personally don't see myself ever watching this one again. It's just ultimately forgetful, and very disappointing, too. And I have no idea what the fuck they're gonna do for the fifth movie, especially considering the year it came out in. However, I'll get to all that when I eventually cover it in a couple of weeks. For now, though, I'm gonna go do something better. Perhaps I'll just go and watch something like "Wicked City". Why not? I haven't seen that in over a year and a half, so I'm gonna go do that next once I get done typing this review up.
Anyways, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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