Sorry, this movie sucks

Better Late Then Never

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I had high hopes for this one. "Phantasm IV: Oblivion" has the inescapable 90's direct-to-video feel to it. Other than that, good shooting location, nice end credits song (Reggie Bannister does an almost-heavy-metalish cover of the Phantasm theme), and my favourite part was the motel scene where the blonde had spheres in her...well, you know where I'm going with this.

Maybe I like this one more than II or III ... it's hard to say. On the plus side, it tries to have an atmosphere more like the original film and less like a horror action comedy. On the minus side, it literally makes no sense. Unused footage from the original film was found and dropped into this film as ... well as what? It depicts events that could not have happened given how the original film ultimately came together, so what is this meant to represent? This is really symptomatic of the entire film. Reggie encounters some chick on the road, and stuff happens, but none of her interactions with him really make sense or ultimately amount to anything. It's a bit like all the elements of your typical Phantasm film were dropped in a cup, shook up, and dumped out onto a table and then that was filmed.

Here we have it. The last Phantasm film. This time round things are a lot more reserved, as our heroes kind of get to the bottom of things. Michael finds himself out in the desert with the Tall Man, with Reggie not far behind. Jody's back too, guiding Reggie and Michael, but can he be trusted? We finally find out where the Tall Man comes from, and why he's so interested in Michael. Reggie's basically here to provide the action while Michael confronts the Tall Man. I read somewhere there wasn't a lot of money to make this film and you can tell. However, it's a lot moodier than the last two, and does provide a semi-satisfying end to the series. (SPOILERS AHEAD) Although it's not entirely made clear, I thought that what the ending meant was that Michael, who was already shown as being very clingy to Jody, couldn't quite get over Jody dying and had created this whole world around him where the Tall Man was stealing corpses (and therefore also stealing Jody). The Tall Man was doing something awful with the corpses, and to Michael it was as if the dead (including Jody) could not find peace in the afterlife. Michael was completely in denial about it all, but when the Tall Man says 'It was all in his head' and then we cut to a young Michael in the van with Reggie, we hear Jody whispering. This time, Michael denies he heard it, finally accepting that Jody is dead. Note that this is the only film that does not end in a cliffhanger too.

Phantasm IV (1998) * 1/2 (out of 4)Fourth and final film in the series takes a different approach to the familiar storyline of the previous two films. This time out, starting off at the end of part three, the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) travels throughout time trying to capture Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) who is trying to figure out the origins of the Tall Man and the secrets behind the death of his brother. Reggie (Reggie Banister) is also out there trying to locate Mike so that he can save him. This fourth film in the series at least had the Tall Man looking for someone instead of the same story of Reggie and Mike looking for him. The one benefit of this is that we get more screen time devoted to the Tall Man but most of the good stuff ends there. Seeing as how parts two through four take place as one continuous story, I couldn't help but think that had the three sequels been edited together as one movie then perhaps the series would have worked better. I felt a lot of the stuff in parts two and three was just carried on to the point of it being boring and I think that holds true here so if the director had simply made one good story instead of three weak ones, I might have enjoyed the series more. Once again the performances are decent, if nothing great with Banister and Scrimm standing out. The gore this time out is rather low, although we do get a few good kills scattered out. The story itself isn't the strongest in the world but it is a mildly interesting one but I wish there had been more backbone to it. We do learn a few new things about the Tall Man but there's still not too much and it really doesn't do any good considering the series is now over.