User reviews

This is a strange short, blending the late 1960s cultural freedom movements-such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono's bed-ins and other anti-war protests while being nude-with the 1970s pop art style reminiscent of Andy Warhol. The film experiments heavily with color filters and overexposed imagery, sometimes showing human figures, sometimes statues, and sometimes random visuals of 1970s Japan. Then, out of nowhere, there's a yoga performance-echoing the psychedelic era's fascination with yoga and Indian spirituality during the 1960s and 1970s. I'd categorize this as a piece of 1970s pop-cultural experimentation that uses cinema as a medium for art performance.

I'll say this. It's cool to come across a film - short or otherwise - that pretty much entirely defies genre conventions. I guess "experimental" could be its own genre, but even then, you get experimental movies sometimes that are sort of dramas, or sort of fantastical, or that might be vaguely mysterious/thrilling.

Phantom is just colors and confusion and some very jarring editing. It creates a unique fever dream-like atmosphere, but as to why it wants to create a unique fever dream-like atmosphere, I do not know.

Maybe there's one other way to approach it. It's like some kind of psychedelic yoga video, almost like Alejandro Jodorowsky getting really into yoga instead of... whatever that other thing he's weirdly into is. He'd probably make his yoga grosser, though.

I don't know, don't watch Phantom? Like, I have no idea.

Do watch Phantom. I don't know. It experiments and it flashes and it unsettles slightly and it doesn't waste too much time.

The only thing I can say with confidence is that if Phantom was supposed to convince me to take up yoga, it failed miserably.

Eyeball.