Dr. Jennifer Pailey (Joanna Going) lives and works in the tiny town of Snowfield, Colorado.  Jennifer brings her sister Lisa (Rose McGowan) home with her for some bonding time.  When they arrive, they notice that the town is unusually empty.  Then they find Jennifer’s housekeeper dead.  Soon they find more dead bodies.  At first Jennifer thinks it may be a disease that infected everyone, but they then find severed hands and heads.

The girls run into Sheriff Bryce Hammond (Ben Affleck) and his deputies, Stuart “Stu” Wargle (Liev Schreiber) and Steve Shanning (Nicky Katt).  Bryce is former FBI.  He had been on the phone with the Snowfield police when it suddenly went dead.  He and his deputies came to check out what happened and are now in the middle of a nightmare.  The group begins to hear strange noises and lights go on and off.  They start searching to see if anyone else is alive. 

At the local hotel they find a few body parts and a pile of metal objects that look like they were taken from people, including jewelry, gold teeth and a pacemaker.  In a locked bathroom they find a note written on a mirror in lipstick that says “Timothy Flyte-The Ancient Enemy”.  Suddenly there is a noise outside.  Deputy Shanning rushes out to see what is going on and disappears. 

Everyone else returns to the sheriff’s office.  Bryce tries to call for help but there appears to be trouble on the line and he’s not sure how much of his message is being heard.  A giant moth appears and attacks Stu.  It eats off his face.  Stu is put into a body bag and left in the morgue.  Sometime later Stu returns and confronts Lisa.  Lisa gets away and tells Bryce.  Bryce, Lisa and Jennifer check and find that Stu’s dead body is gone.  The remaining three survivors now know that something menacing is toying with them.

In the meantime, based on the bits and pieces of Bryce’s phone call, the FBI tracks down Timothy Flyte.  Flyte turns out to be a former paleo-biologist who has resorted to publishing his radical theories of what he calls an “ancient enemy” in a rag magazine known as “World News”.  Flyte is taken to Snowfield where he comes face to face with a prehistoric being he believes is responsible for the disappearance of previous civilizations such as the Mayans, and the colonists from Roanoke Island.  The primeval entity wants Flyte to tell the world of its existence.          

“Phantoms” was released in 1998 and was directed by Joe Chappelle.  It is an American science fiction horror thriller loosely based on the novel by Dean Koontz.

It’s been years since I’ve read Dean Koontz’s “Phantoms” so I don’t remember how well it adapts to the film, but Koontz was the screenwriter for the film so I’m sure it included most of what Koontz wanted to say.  I’ve heard that Koontz included some Lovecraftian style to the original book that’s not in the film. 

As a standalone horror movie, it has a lot of creepy atmosphere and slow building tension.  It does get a little muddy when it comes to explaining what the Ancient One really is.  I get that it is an entity that has been around for millions of years but relating it to an oil spill seemed a little bit of a letdown.  Still there were some nice visuals and the moth creature turned out better than I expected.  It ended up being a decent and interesting horror movie.    

In one scene a piece of the creature turns into a small lizard.  I believe the lizard was a leopard gecko.

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