Dean Koontz’s Phantoms

Based on Dean Koontz’s book, Dean Koontz’s Phantoms follows a collection of characters, including Ben Affleck’s Bryce Hammond, Rose McGowan’s Lisa Pailey, and Peter O’Toole’s Timothy Flyte, as they attempt to figure out to where hundreds of small-town residents have disappeared. It’s a fairly decent setup that’s immediately employed to underwhelming and almost shockingly tedious effect by Joe Chappelle, as the filmmaker delivers a sluggish thriller that suffers from a distressing paucity of compelling, interesting characters – with talented performers like Affleck, McGowan, and Liev Scheiber, cast as an off-kilter police officer, trapped within the confines of unconvincing and hopelessly generic figures. (O’Toole admittedly tries his best to inject the proceedings with some life and vitality, but his efforts are rendered moot as the exhaustingly half-baked narrative unfolds.) The ongoing emphasis on a core mystery that couldn’t possibly be less interesting certainly exacerbates the mostly interminable atmosphere, and it’s clear, as well, that the protracted climax, which is riddled with laughably shoddy special effects, ensures that the whole thing concludes on as anticlimactic and incompetent a note as one could possibly envision – with the end result a seriously disappointing adaptation of a comparatively masterful novel.

* out of ****