Phantasm: Ravager (2016) — Triskaidekafiles

PHANTASM: RAVAGER

WRITERS: Don Coscarelli and David Hartman

DIRECTOR: David Hartman

STARRING: Reggie Bannister as reggie

A. Michael Baldwin as Mike

Bill Thornbury as Jody

Kat Lester as Lady in Lavender

Gloria Lynne Henry as Rocky

Dawn Cody as Dawn/Jane

Stephen Jutras as Chunk

Daniel Roebuck as Demeter

Daniel Schweiger as Cuda Thief

Angus Scrimm as the Tall Man

QUICK CUT: Reggie struggles with dementia and looks back on his life.

THE MORGUE

Reggie - A man on a mission, a man with a four barreled shotgun, and a man who has been on this journey for so long, he no longer knows what is real and whjat is in his head.

Mike - Reggie’s oldest friend, a kind kid who has been at his side more often than not, and are brothers in name, if not in blood.

The Tall Man - He’s tall. He’s a man. He’s got lots of balls.

Chunk - A resistance fighter with a biting tongue, but loyal to a fault.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We come once more to the end of the road for a franchise, and this time, we will be taking one last trip in the hemi 'Cuda, chasing after the Tall Man, in our look at Phantasm Ravager. So let's get into this.

First of all, that was some gap between 4 and 5, eh? 15, nearly 20 years ago. And Reggie is still slogging through the desert in search of his friends, his car, his ice cream truck, his exploding house...and along the way, he's picking over what has been left behind in Tallman's path.

Reggie gives the briefest of recaps to get people up to speed, and continues his walk down the lonely road, until finally a car pulls up behind him.

Of course, Reggie is on foot, because his car was stolen, and FUNNY bit of coincidence, guess who stopped to give him a ride?

This works out to Reggie's advantage when he tricks the guy into reaching for a gun that's not there, and he gets the drop on the thief.

As Reggie drives off with his car and the guy's clothes, a pair of Sentinels come along to kill the thief, and then chase after Reggie.

Once Reggie has shot the balls to hell and back, he drives off...and is suddenly in a wheelchair. What a downgrade.

The look on everyone’s face trying to make sense of this franchise.

Reggie, like the audience, is confused, and Mike catches him, and thus us, up; it seems this is a perfectly normal world, and a perfectly normal Reggie, with no Tall Man troubling it, and there never was.

The only downside is, Reggie has dementia, and Mike is trying to keep him engaged, and asks him to tell him his story.

"Wait...HOW many times did your house blow up??"

So Reggie passes things along, and says that "like with all good stories, it starts with a girl..."

GODSdamnit Reggie, how many times will you fall for a pretty face??

Long story short, Reggie picks up Dawn and takes her back to her secluded farm, and Reggie spends the night. Reggie tells HER about his adventures while he tells Mike about his adventures, and...why does NO ONE in these ravaged lands ever seem to noticed everything falling apart, or know why?

Needless to say, this is a Phantasm movie, and while everyone sleeps, the Sentinels arrive and kill Dawn in her sleep.

Reggie discovers the body and runs off, running into the farmhand who doesn't speak English. All the noise draws the attention of the balls, and Demeter bites it.

After returning to the really real world for a bit, and Alternative Mike explains a bit of multivese theory and hurgh, this series is never gonna make a lick of sense. I both love it and hate it for that.

Uh, where was I? Right, back on the run trudging through the woods. Reggie sees a giant sentinel floating in the sky above him like another planet came to visit, and then wakes back up in his wheelchair.

And it's at this point of the movie, I think we reach the, well, point of the movie. Reggie doesn't wanna go out sitting in some bed slowly dying, but instead with his four barrel shotgun, chasing hell and taking the fight to the bad guys. He wants to go out on his own terms, and that can be a powerful message.

Oh great, now we have a Traveler to deal with.

Reggie is confronted with a gateway, steps through it, and finds himself in a white void with the Tall Man, at last.

We find out we're back in 1979, and Reggie is offered a choice, to turn away and change fate, saving his loved ones, or continuing to fight and watch everything he cares about die. Again, tying into that theme of wanting to do things differently, living a good life, living on your own terms...

Reggie encounters the Lady in Lavender again, and after shooting her in the face, ventures into a cavern where some lurkers are well, lurking around.

We eventually run back into the Tall Man, who once again makes his offer to restore Reggie's family. Reggie won't take them, but if he gives him Jody and Mike, he will walk away. But those two are important to the Tall Man's plans, whatever THOSE are, and he says no.

In fact, he outright says Reggie is unimportant and has served his purpose, and tosses him aside...to walk up in...one reality or another.

Also, this movie sure is a lotta standing around and chatting, huh? I mean, I get it, considering the ages of some people here, but man.

Reggie has awoken, strapped down to a table, and he ends up getting rescued by some weirdoes in masks. They eventually reveal themselves to be Dawn and friends. Well, Jane, since realities are screwy.

Also, Mike is there with them, and they reveal they've been hunting for Reggie these last 10ish years or whatever, instead of the reverse.

It seems Reggie has been strapped down all these time, being milked for information and mentally toyed with. If not for ongoing flickers between realities, I was ready to accept that as an explanation for ALL of this.

The gang heads to leave, and we learn the world has gone to shit, and it's really not our world anymore. The skies have gone red, and everything is on fire. The Post Apocalypse has finally arrived.

An antimatter wave is gonna hit any second and make this moot anyways.

I gotta say, this whole Ravaged World sequence actually seems really cool. It FEELS like a culmination, that we were always coming to this point, one way or another, and it has an amazing epic feel to it.

We have slipped back and forth from the apocalypse to the hospital, and I haven't mentioned every one, since they're usually quick and nothing happens.

But here, Reggie wakes up in his room, Mike shows up, and says he had the same dream about the last four movies. And now he believes.

We get a bit of things from Mike's perspective, how he had a yellow ball in his head, patching up the wound, and how he can still feel a connection with Lurch.

After a fight with the Tall Man involving a rocket launcher, and a few more reality shifts, the Tall Man takes Jane. The boys gear up and head through a gate to the alien world.

The Tall Man tells them they may kill him, but there are thousands of him, across many worlds and dimensions, and he will always return.

A yellow orb says hi to Mike, a Graver kills Jane, Chunk goes stabby on some Lurkers, and eventually Chunk runs at the Tall Man with half a dozen grenades, blowing both of them up but good.

Reggie falls out of the gate on the front lawn of his hospital, and we get a full blown tear between realities as we see both existing at once through a thin veil. Or, a psychotic break, I don't even know anymore.

The doctors try to sedate Reggie, but he makes his choice, and either steps into the broken world, or gives in to his dementia once and for all. And since before one of those shifts in reality, some gravers were his doctors, you can read a lot into this.

So they take out a bunch more Gravers, and that's when the Battlecuda shows up, all decked out with chain guns and armour and shit.

I’ve been wearing this reality for too long, it’s getting holes in it.

And behind the wheel is...Jody! And while he's nice to see, at the same time, this is a bit late for the movie to be adding Jody to the plot.

The trio, finally, truly reuinited, drive off and plan to head north where it's cold, hopefully safer from the Tall Man.

But all this joyful reunion is intercut with Reggie dying in the real world, so make of it for yourself what's real and what isn't.

That could be the end of it, but we see a slightly crispy Chunk fall out of a gate after his fight with the Brendan, and landing at the feet of...Rocky! Again, a bit late to bring her in, but her arrival does make me feel like all this IS in Reggie's head, and he's given himself the perfect ending with all his friends as he slips away.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: This is nice and crisp and sharp, and even used to good effect, like in the white void. The CG may be dodge at times, but for the most part it’s fine.

Audio: Pretty good, with a nice mix all around.

Sound Bite: “Dude! Bad news about your horse!”

Body Count: Ahhh, the Phantasm series continues to deliver, to the very last.

1 - A body is murdered just out of sight by an orb, almost 5 minutes in.

2 - The guy who stole Reggie's car gets balled.

3 - Reggie finds Dawn with a sphere embedded in her head.

4 - Demeter takes a Sentinel to the neck.

5 - Reggie shoots the Tall Woman in the face.

6 - And then machine guns down a Jawa.

7 -Chunk takes out a Jawa.

8 - One of Mike's men headsplodes.

9 - Person on the news headsplodes

10 - A graver snaps Jane's neck

11 - Chunk stabs a Jawa.

12 - And another

13 - And knives the graver.

14 - Then Chunk bombs the Tall Boy

15 - 17 - Reggie blasts some gravers

18 - 20 - And so does Mike

21 - And one more

22 and 23 - Some get gunned down by the battlecuda

24 - Reggie dies in the hospital

Best Corpse: Demeter’s death is tops for the movie.

Blood Type - B+: Lots of gushing blood, and some decent effects, as you’ve come to expect from the franchise.

Sex Appeal: Huh, I think we had nothing to speak of this time out.

Drink Up! every time there’s an explosion.

Movie Review: Well, it’s a Phantasm movie. You know what you’re in for at this point, and this one continues the trend of being coherent in the short term, but in the details, it kinda becomes a confusing mess with little to no answers, or more questions than answers at the end of the day. You are either down for that, or you’re not. If you are, if you are this deep into the Phantasm franchise, there is a lot to enjoy here. It’s got that same odd dreamlike quality, it’s got some solid gore, and all the tricks you’ve come to expect. While in some regards it’s not a conclusion, there is a lot of finality here, and it does feel like an ending. It’s a little less than the others though, and while it has some big themes to it, the movie never quite knows what to do with them other than say, here’s an idea! Three out of five wheelchairs.

Entertainment Value: There’s nothing in the camp sense here, everything is as solid as ever, but the movie is fun, and entertaining in just being a well made adventure. The bizarre head scratching stuff here is more of a WTF nature, than being weird entertainingly. Three out of five battlecudas.