Phantasm: Ravager

David Hartman – 2016 – USA

Some movies go off the rails in their third acts.  This one starts out nowhere near any rails.  That’s not a complaint, for in the parallel universes of Phantasm, logic, consequence and chronology are all equally meaningless.  The fifth and final chapter in the franchise that began in 1979, Ravager is essentially the same recurring dream as all the other films; former ice-cream man Reggie (Reggie Bannister) and Mike (Michael Baldwin) alternately chasing and fleeing the sinister Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), with his diminutive minions and deadly flying silver spheres, while bouncing about from one dimension to the next.  Creator Don Coscarelli doesn’t direct this one, but it doesn’t feel terribly different than if he had.  The problem I have with all the sequels, though, is that they somewhat undermine Coscarelli’s frequent theme of mortality.  His best films deal with the inevitability and aftermath of death – notably Kenny & Co. (1976) and the original Phantasm – and so the sequels, in which interdimensional travel makes death far from final, the personal nature of the director’s feelings on the subject gradually evaporate.  Ravager is certainly the cheapest of the series and it attempts to make up for it with wackiness that compares more to the Evil Dead movies than the sober and surreal Phantasm.  It’s all in good fun, though, and it’s an enjoyable movie, mostly thanks to the familiar faces we’ve seen mature on film over the years.