Yesterday I posted a terrible review of Phantasm IV. Usually when I hate a movie that bad, I refrain from posting about it at all, especially when all the people involved are so cool. It’s not that I don’t think artists should be above criticism (hell no), I just feel there are too many blogs which poke fun at B-movies and not enough that celebrate them. Had I known how much I would dislike Phantasm IV, I never would have watched it, much less committed myself to reviewing the entire series.
Phantasm V is far better than Phantasm IV, but that isn’t saying much. To be sure, it’s nowhere near as good as anything in the original trilogy. The movie’s biggest mistake is it doesn’t simply ignore the revelations of the fourth film. The Tall Man’s insulting origin as a human being is still canon, which means I can no longer give a shit about the Tall Man. It’s sad that this is Angus Scrimm’s final performance.
There are some saving graces. This one is immediately more entertaining than its predecessor. When we first see Reggie, he’s stumbling through the desert in his war-torn ice cream uniform, lugging around his trademark four-barrel shotgun. His hair has been darkened in an attempt to sustain continuity, but at one point you can actually see the dye coming off on his collar.
One moment Reggie is battling the forces of evil, then he finds himself in a rest home where he’s assured his fantastical story about the Tall Man is the result of early onset dementia. I was praying the movie wouldn’t abandon the new direction (After all, the Tall Man said in the previous film: “Ice cream man, it’s all in his head.”), as it would allow the series to retcon all the shit I dislike. No such luck, however.
In the last movie we got unnecessary time travel. This time we get parallel universes. Fine, I don’t care at this point. I appreciate the direction the filmmakers were going, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Along the way, you’ll see a familiar faces, joyless CGI, bad cinematography, and obvious Airsoft weaponry posing as the real thing. Ravager scares up some of the old fun, but it’s just not worth acknowledging Oblivion was canon.
R.I.P. Phantasm. May you never get rebooted.
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