Phantoms--Reaction Post--Zombie Fridays
Jun. 26th, 2011 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocusWhen I was in college I went through a John Saul phase. He's a horror writer for those who didn't know. I read him pretty exclusively for about six months...the time it took me to realize that all of his books were basically the same book. Change the name of the child in jeopardy and the name of the small town, slightly alter the unseen terror, and there you go. Another best seller. I never got into Stephen King. I've read one of his books, The Stand, and that was only after seeing the mini-series. Dean Koontz I've never read at all, but Friday night I watched a movie based on one of his books.
It isn't a zombie movie, but there are corpses walking around at certain points, so close enough to qualify. And it had two of my girls in it, Rose McGowan (Paige Matthews, Charmed) and Joanna Going (Lisa Grady, Another World, Alice Abbott, Inventing the Abbots). They were cast as sisters and boy that casting director should be given a round of applause. They actually look like each other. It also had Ben Affleck and Liev Shrieber, who was creepy. In fact he was so creepy I don't think I will ever be comfortable watching him in anything else. When you see a guy feeling up a female corpse, it kind of changes things, good actor or not. Ben was in his young and not so good acting days. (It's a 1996 movie).
Phantoms wasn't a particularly good movie. But it was one of those ones that I couldn't stop watching. Mostly because of Rose and Joanna, who were both brilliant. They arrive in the older sister's hometown to no one on the streets and when they get to her house food is cooking on the stove but there's no sign of the housekeeper. Then they find her, horribly dead. Thus begins a hunt through town to try to find another living soul, while being pursued by some nameless horror. Eventually the Sherriff and two of his deputies (who were out patrolling the roads or something outside of town) show up. One deputy promptly gets his face eaten off by The Ancient Enemy. And Evil Liev Shrieber keeps doing evil things and laughing very disturbingly and you just keep hoping he's the one who will get eaten next.
The military finally comes in with a writer who has written about The Ancient Evil and they do all sorts of stuff to try to stop the monster. Turns out it's this thing that absorbs information from everything or person it eats, so it knows what they know which makes it very formidable. In the end they discover it is petrolatum, a cousin to petroleum and so they use this oil eating bacteria (used on oil spills) to kill it. I couldn't help feeling through the movie that this was an advertisement agains the evil oil companies, but maybe I read too much into it.
It did have a couple of genuine scares. But they were never with the mood music. Everytime the mood music got intense, they'd open a door and nothing would be behind it. It was only when the music was absent that the truly scary stuff happened. I jumped at least twice, possibly three times. So, all in all, pretty watchable if you get over the creepiness factor of Liev Shrieber and also if you can handle dismembered heads and hands. Would I watch it agian? No. But once was at least interesting and entertaining.
It isn't a zombie movie, but there are corpses walking around at certain points, so close enough to qualify. And it had two of my girls in it, Rose McGowan (Paige Matthews, Charmed) and Joanna Going (Lisa Grady, Another World, Alice Abbott, Inventing the Abbots). They were cast as sisters and boy that casting director should be given a round of applause. They actually look like each other. It also had Ben Affleck and Liev Shrieber, who was creepy. In fact he was so creepy I don't think I will ever be comfortable watching him in anything else. When you see a guy feeling up a female corpse, it kind of changes things, good actor or not. Ben was in his young and not so good acting days. (It's a 1996 movie).
Phantoms wasn't a particularly good movie. But it was one of those ones that I couldn't stop watching. Mostly because of Rose and Joanna, who were both brilliant. They arrive in the older sister's hometown to no one on the streets and when they get to her house food is cooking on the stove but there's no sign of the housekeeper. Then they find her, horribly dead. Thus begins a hunt through town to try to find another living soul, while being pursued by some nameless horror. Eventually the Sherriff and two of his deputies (who were out patrolling the roads or something outside of town) show up. One deputy promptly gets his face eaten off by The Ancient Enemy. And Evil Liev Shrieber keeps doing evil things and laughing very disturbingly and you just keep hoping he's the one who will get eaten next.
The military finally comes in with a writer who has written about The Ancient Evil and they do all sorts of stuff to try to stop the monster. Turns out it's this thing that absorbs information from everything or person it eats, so it knows what they know which makes it very formidable. In the end they discover it is petrolatum, a cousin to petroleum and so they use this oil eating bacteria (used on oil spills) to kill it. I couldn't help feeling through the movie that this was an advertisement agains the evil oil companies, but maybe I read too much into it.
It did have a couple of genuine scares. But they were never with the mood music. Everytime the mood music got intense, they'd open a door and nothing would be behind it. It was only when the music was absent that the truly scary stuff happened. I jumped at least twice, possibly three times. So, all in all, pretty watchable if you get over the creepiness factor of Liev Shrieber and also if you can handle dismembered heads and hands. Would I watch it agian? No. But once was at least interesting and entertaining.
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Date: 2011-06-26 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-26 09:50 pm (UTC)I read Stephen King when I was in my late teens/early twenties. It was then that I got bored with him. *shrugs* Dean Koontz is scary good, but I haven't read any of his books in several years. Have you ever read Robin Cook? He writes medical thriller/horror.
These days, I tend to read more 'boring' stuff like non-fiction.
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Date: 2011-06-27 02:32 am (UTC)Joanna Going! I totally remember her from AW. :D
If you can find it, "Pontypool" is a good zombie movie where you don't see much in the way of zombies (it's mostly implied). It's got a very play-like atmosphere - I could totally see it being done on the stage or as a radio play (which I guess was done at some point). At least it was something a little different.
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Date: 2011-06-27 03:25 am (UTC)True fax, when I first read The Stand, I got a head cold. It was terrifying. Since then, I have gotten a cold every single time I read that book. Probably psychosomatic at this point, but still creepy.
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Date: 2011-06-27 03:36 am (UTC)