Phantasm IV: Oblivion
Well the title sounds ominous.
This installment start off where Phantasm III ended. Mike is on the run. Reggie is trapped by the Tall Man’s spheres. Jody, Mikes brother, is still a black sphere. All the other players from part II are gone.
Reggie is allowed to leave and avoids death by silver balls. He heads out after Mike who is driving a hearse into the vast wasteland that is part of this world. HE is out to find more about the Tall Man and their creepy gold sphere in the head connection.
While on the road Reggie is attacked by a demon cop for some unknown reason. He also picks up a girl who needs roadside assistance. This of course leads to Reggie getting all smooth and quasi-pervy on the lady. He is denied sexy time and goes to sleep. This starts the first of a few too many dream sequences in the film. Reggie dreams of Mike and stuff. He awakes to the pretty lady next to him in bed with her chest undulating. This can mean one thing! Reggie is going to explore her boobs! As the shirt pops open we see that her chesticles have been replaced with the well-known Tall Man silver spheres! Reggie dispatches them and heads after Mike again.
Meanwhile Mike is still in the hearse and looking for the Tall Man I guess. He gets his wish and is accosted by the Tall Man who shows up to say stuff and disappear into the coffin the hearse is carrying. What? Anyway Mike stops writes a note and tries to kill himself. I guess to get the Tall Man’s attention? I don’t know what is going on anymore. The Tall Man stops the suicide attempt. Mike travels back in time to the Civil War. Here he meets Jebediah Morningside, the Tall Man before he was the Tall Man. We get a bit of backstory on the Tall Man! He was a mortician back in the 1800’s. He was interested in the veil between life and death. He created a hand crank machine that opens those portals he is always walking through. Wait we are getting somewhere. Mike can stop the Jebediah before he become this creepy dimension crossing dude with and army of dwarf zombies and shiny death balls! That is a plan that makes sense on paper! Let’s do this!
Well that all this goes to pot. Mike and Reggie reunite. They fight some zombie dwarves. There is another couple dream sequences. Mike’s brother, Jody, is really a bad guy/black sphere. Mike kills the Jody sphere. The Tall Man captures Mike only for him to escape. Reggie is about doing Reggie stuff. There is some sort of dimensional travel. A hearse explodes. The Tall Man dies? The Tall Man is killed, but a new one arrives. The gold sphere in Mike’s head is removed. Mike is dying and Reggie chases after the Tall Man to finish the job? Mike is dying and we end with a dream sequence.
Confused by what you just read? GOOD!
This is what this series has always been about. Confusion. Well that and A creepy villain and silver spheres. I have no idea what was really going on in this movie. It was a damned mess of dream sequences and dimensional/time travel. When the previous film finally laid some ground work for an explanation this comes along and completely goes off the rails bonkers. I guess the addition of a look at where the Tall Man came from was alright. There was some hope there. Then it was quickly pushed aside for dream sequences and really bad nonsense. Damn it! I wanted this to be good. I had hope that after three confusing films that this would bring some clarity. I was wrong.
This was the messiest of the film in terms of story. I still have no idea what happened.
No there is supposedly a 5th chapter in this series and it is supposed to be released this year. I am going to have a hard time wanting to watch it, but I know I eventually will and I’ll hate myself after I do it.
Phantasm IV. A train wreck of a film with really no redeeming quality. It wasn’t fun like Phantasm II. It was a mess like Phantasm, especially with all the unused footage from that film showing up in this movie. It made less sense than Phantasm III. It wasn’t bloody. It wasn’t creepy. It really wasn’t fun.
Damn it.
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