No, I didn't hate this movie and I actually think it is one of the more watchable ones within its series. It however still remains a very messy movie and a poorly done and told one.
You would think that director Don Coscarelli after 4 movies would really have lots of love for all of its characters and stories but none of this can be seen back on the screen really. Hardly any effort seems to be put in its story and it's just a mess of random occurring stuff. After 4 movies I still haven't really got a clue what the the story is all about. It doesn't help that they keep adding stuff, such as time traveling and Jedi powers, which only all adds up to the confusion of the story.
The series has been much liked for it's mixture of horror and comedy but I just think neither of those two elements ever work out strong enough, in neither of the 4 movies actually. It's why I'm just not a big fan at all of the series.
To be honest, the movie started out quite promising for me but it soon took a turn for the worse. It seems to be a trend with all the 4 movies that the second half is so messy and uninteresting, as if they were running out of ideas every time they were making these movies.
But like I mentioned, it still is one of the more watchable movies out of its series. Things flow more pleasantly and the movie seemed to be full with plenty of potentially good ideas but none of them ever gets executed really well enough. It's a movie filled with missed opportunities and it's as if just a little bit more effort was put into its script, this could had actually been a decent, entertaining movie.
So I'm not too sad about it that this movie (at this moment) remains the last one of the series. It also became painfully obviously in this movie how old all of the actors were starting to get. The first movie "Phantasm" got released in 1979, so almost 20 years had passed between the first movie and this one. The kid actors from the first one are all adults now and around their 40's. Reggie Bannister also suddenly started to look very old in this and it should be a law that a person who has lost already 70% of his hair just can't wear a ponytail. But even more shockingly old was Angus Scrimm as the tall man. He always looked old, in all of the movies but in this one he suddenly looks ancient. But in fact he only was in his early 70's at the time of this movie and he actually is still alive and working as well now days, which can't be said for most of the other actors within this movie. But fact remains they were starting to look too old in this movie to still convincingly work out an action like battle between good and evil. I prefer to watch "The Expendables" instead then, thank you very much!
It's almost the best out of the series but that really isn't saying much.
5/10
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