Phantom Force

Now this is a weird film! I've never before seen a made-for-TV movie give me two distinctly different experiences. For starters, the good...

The special effects are, as stated above, not just decent, they're pretty damn good! Especially the underwater sub sequences which are quite believable, and the spectral look of the main sub was nothing short of excellent. Which leads me to think the production values couldn't have been that bad if they'd spent so much on getting the effects just right.

The story as well was full of potential, which kept me tuned in for just about an hour to see how it would pan out. The premise kept me intrigued as it reminded me of a few similar movies, mostly Event Horizon.

...Oh God how I wished I WAS watching Event Horizon by the 55th minute! Whilst that is dark and brooding, this is light and fluffy - yes even the apparently gory scenes! The bit in the medilab was hilarious, after the apparently gruesome death the ex-cop came in and immediately said "no clear spot in the blood splatter, he was alone!" - Christ why isn't she on CSI? They'd solve their cases in a 30 minute slot instead! The opening sequence introducing Grieco was, almost without doubt, the biggest load of God-awful crap I've ever witnessed. For a moody, troubled, hard-as-nails, all-action hero he didn't half resemble a good solid piece of timber (make-up, mannerisms and dialogue!). The bad guy wasn't much better "put ze vomen in front of ze door" he says meanacingly in a dubbed fashion in front of the wobbly red immovable 10" thick steel door, 'oh God NO!' we scream, until we realise they go there fairly eagerly...and there's only three of them - actually there's only five hostages in total!! But glory of glories the special forces arrive, standing 3-4 feet behind the cardboardy-steel red tubes for cover, shooting from the hip with their magic bullets, you know, the ones that hit the bad guys in the shoulder and they die instantly! But I persevered and the following bit with the debriefing wasn't half-bad acted, and introduced the intriguing storyline quite well.

However, the character introductions were all over the place, they recruit the geek in the style of the movie S.W.A.T., then you expect to see the remainder of the crew introduced in the same fashion (a bit formulaic but whatever works!), which I'm sure was the scriptwriter's intension until he realised he'd spent too much time setting up the geek the blonde and Grieco. Hence the cringeworthy boardroom scene where the boss points at the 3 other new faces and basically says "oh yeah, you're also taking him, him and her with you!"...ridiculous considering the other 'her' was a fairly integral character due to her past experiences with 'bad mojo'.

After about an hour I noticed that the story wasn't exactly moving that much, they'd been on the sub for about 20 minutes and were in the process of fighting back a medieval horde with their hi-tec (or hi-tat!)plastic, made in Taiwan guns, but hadn't made any actual progress whatsoever, except emotionally between the two girls! There was no feeling of urgency at all, and there was a distinct feeling of 'cleanliness' and a severe lack of bodies around considering that the entire crew of 38 had apparently been massacred.

I've just lost an hour of my life to this film due to it's promising nature, which is what's so disappointing - it's OK if a movie's basically crap, you can just switch off, but this one promised to get going so many times but ultimately let me down through poor direction choices, wooden acting by the leads, and a terrible, terrible dialogue! In conclusion, don't watch this on a Saturday night, you'll cry as you'd have missed a night out on the town for it! Try a Monday or Tuesday night so you won't feel so bad about it! Promising movie, fairly good storyline, excellent special effects let down by a dodgy cast, direction and script. It may not have been the most expensive thing ever made, but judging by the high standard of the special effects, they had enough money available to have produced a much better quality product than what eventually materialised...by all means watch it, but it's your funeral!

This was, as stated previously both predictable and an excellent pilot for a TV series. Alas, no TV series will follow.

Why, then did I give it seven points? It is an excellent execution of a simple plot. Moreover, the Big-Evil-Thingy-In-Question (to avoid a spoiler), has a potentially Lovecraftian, distant, unknowable sort of horror to it.

Of course, the script-writer completely failed to exploit it and makes it tangible long before its potential horror has expired.

If you like single-concept science fiction, punctuated by insufficiently bloody violence (aka B-movies), you will enjoy this as much as I did.

Ich_Yama's SciFi-meter:

(BBB: 2 primary characters)

(BEM: Spectral and Humanoid)

(World: Present/near-future)

I love good horror movies, especially ghost stories. From the previews, it looked like it was going to be a good story with some decent special effects.

Wrong!

The acting was ok...but they couldn't do much with the push-button script. The few special effects they had were good, but there could have been much more of them.

The plot was, for the most part, predictable. Although, I can usually predict who lives and who dies, but I must admit they surprised me on that one.

All in all, I was very disappointed.

It looked like it was the pilot to a sci-fi series, which wouldn't be bad...it is a great premise.

Try as I might, as much as I do dislike a lot of the SciFi/SyFy Channel original movies, I did actually want to like Phantom Force. Although the idea was somewhat derivative it did interest me in seeing it. But I just didn't like Phantom Force at all. It seemed as though it was striving to be a more gruesome and dramatic version of GhostBusters(though I acknowledge it may not have been), minus the sense of fun and great effects that film had. The set looks as though it was left over from something like Deep Shock and the whole film even for a film of the genre looks too drab with editing that is lacking in any kind of fluidity. The effects have been far worse since this film, but they are just alright here. But the visuals aren't the worst part. The worst asset despite the potential, was the story, dull in the pace and sometimes convoluted such as if the crew were eco-kinetic why couldn't they see the demons being I imagine in the same dimension as them? It also tries to make something out of the oft-done submarine scenario, but does it with no element of suspense, and the climax is underwhelming to say the least. Aside from the story, the script is terrible, cheesy and lifeless a lot of the time(the whole sitting down and chatting scenes are poorly written and slow the film down) and sometimes even incoherent with the overbearing sound effects and the actors mumbling the way through their lines. The characters, especially the crazy scientist character, are clichéd and despite efforts through flashbacks to give the characters some depth you just don't care for them. The actors also don't seem to do anything with their roles, Richard Grieco especially plods and mumbles his way through the lead role. Overall, had some potential but wasted it by how non-involving the whole film is. 1/10 Bethany Cox

I saw this movie on the sci-fi channel before writing this comment. I liked it, but I guess it was only because I am a Richard Grieco fan. I have to admit, there are a few gruesome scenes, so I would not suggest letting your 5 year-old watch it. The plot was hard to follow as well. In other words, my 5 stars are for Richard Grieco. This movie reminded me a bit of Ghost Busters, but a more gruesome and dramatic version. I bet that most people who saw it thought the same thing. It's worth taking some time to sit down and watch if you are a big fan of ghost stories. In conclusion, if you think that you are getting ready to watch a super-great movie, you will be disappointed.