Phantasm Ravager marks the end of one of the most original and creative horror movie
franchises in history, and more importantly wraps up the epic story of Reggie
the ice cream man and his lonely quest to save his friends and humanity from
the schemes of the Tall Man, a seemingly omnipotent being that can travel
through dimensions, time, and space to reap the dead for his own nefarious
purposes. It seems impractical to
recount the entire story thus far, as the newest entry is really a love note
for the long time “phans” of the series, anyone wondering about the story at
this point is better off watching the series and forming your own informed
opinion about what is really going on in Phantasm, where seeing is easy, but
understanding is the hard part.
When we last saw Reggie he
was chasing the Tall Man through a dimensional gate while Mike laid dying on
the desert floor after the Tall Man extracted a large dark metallic sphere from
his skull; a wound he was very unlikely to survive. Reggie’s back “home” now, we are not sure
where the dimensional gate led him, or for how long he has been chasing the
Tall Man since Oblivion, but it looks like he has returned to his original
dimension. He begins to recant his
story, pointing out that even he is unsure of reality anymore after dealing
with the Tall Man’s tricks for so long.
I believe this opening
dialogue leans into the idea that what we are seeing in Phantasm movies isn’t
real; it is a dream state, a psychosis to deal with the idea of passing from
this world into the next. The first four
movies were all in Mike’s head; when we see him in a coma in bed in part 3
those are actual glimpses of the real world.
He’s been in that twilight state between life and death since the crash
that killed his brother and parents.
Reggie is his last friend trying to ease his passing bedside. Mike is caught in a dream and refuses to
accept death until the end of Oblivion, where he finally accepts what is
happening to him, explained by the last sequence of the film, and allows him self
to pass on.
I think that theory ties the
series together nicely, but doesn’t apply to Ravager. If the first four movies were about Mike
dealing with his passing, Ravager is about Reggie dealing with getting old and
being stuck in a nursery home with senior onset dementia. Reggie is dealing with his passing, but in a
different way. The movie quickly shifts
between Reggie being the bad ass undead ass kicker in the past, to the nursery
home in his present, to an apocalyptic future where the Tall Man has conquered
the planet, sometimes within the same scene or in the middle of a speech. The transitions are so jarring and sudden
that Reggie has trouble coping with it all.
He refuses to accept the nursery home reality; he believes it is all a
trick by the Tall Man.
But I don’t think it’s a
trick at all. I think Mike truly passed
on at the end of Oblivion and finally accepted his fate. Reggie had a family at one point and somehow
lost them, we aren’t sure how, but Mike was the only support he had left, and
he died at the end of Oblivion, leaving poor Reggie alone and destitute. He began grasping at the epic tale Mike told
him bedside while coming in and out of a coma, perhaps embracing the fiction
because it painted him as a hard luck warrior trying to save humanity from the
legions of the dead invading our dimension; a lovely fantasy when Reggie felt
he was at his lowest. The early onset
dementia only exasperated matters, Reggie began believing Mike’s story to be
real, and started living through the adventure in his mind. The few moments he is lucid he is brought
back to the reality of the nursery home, where he struggles with the idea of
being old, dying in bed, and being “shoved into some box”.
When Reggie makes the speech
about dying on his feet with his four barreled shotgun at his side fighting the
forces of evil he is completely rejecting the reality of the old folk’s home,
and a dimensional portal appears. He
goes through it and is completely lost in the rat maze of his mind, jumping
from past to present to future without warning.
The Tall Man appears and offers him a chance to be re-united with his
loved ones in death, but Reggie refuses.
He’s not ready to die yet; instead he demands that the Tall Man return
his friends Mike and Jody back to him.
The rest of the movie is a
check list of classic Phantasm-like moments for the “phans”; Reggie is stalked
by the undead in a massive mausoleum resembling the same complex from part
3. He’s re-united with Mike and battles
the Tall Man in the red dimension all the while experiencing random lucid
moments in the reality of his nursery home room. He is finally re-united with his friends “in
the future”, but in the real world Reggie is slowly passing away in his
bed. As the trio rides off into the
sunset in the series staple 1971 Plymouth Barracuda, Reggie accepts his fate
and dies with his best friends by his side, welcoming him into the afterlife.
Even writing that makes me
emotional. As a “phan” of the series I
thought it hit all the right beats. I
would have wanted a bigger budget and less CGI, more polish, but this series
has always made the most out of a dime store budget. I didn’t like the addition of the new
character “Chunk” so late in the franchise, I thought he was essentially terrible
comedic relief, but rest of the movie is hot
as love. After watching this I’ve
been spinning through the other entries of the series and have no intention of
stopping anytime soon. The Tall Man
LIVES! BOOOOOYYYY!
