My favorite Dean Koontz book is Phantoms. Tells the story a protective sister bringing her younger wilder sister to live with her in a small skit town in Colorado. When they arrive, the town is empty. The town people are mostly gone. The ones they find are dead, and not just sitting in a chair slumped over, but found in grisly twisted ways, in the bakery oven was a good one. The army does come in to “save” the day. It is thought that there is some kind of contamination but the villain in this book is more than a spore, it is an ancient being that believes it is a god, God or what has become known as Satan or the devil. The being has the ability to take over a body of a human, possession.
The movie based on the book came out in 1998. Starring Ben Affleck, Leiv Schreiber, a cute (pre cosmetic surgery) Rose McGowan, and Peter O’Toole. The first three quarter’s of the movie are as good as any sci-fi horror movie out there. There are some very tense scenes, that are elevated due to a great production and use of sound and music. The story benefits due to a lack of creature involvement and creates an expectation of something great. Where the movie lacks is its need to over explain the ending and wrap up into a tidy conclusion. Despite the ending Phantoms is a great adaptation of a book to movie. This can not be said of all of Koontz book to movie productions, but Stephen King adaptations are all not winners either (Dreamcatcher). I was and remain satisfied that Phantoms is a chilling and fantastic horror flick.
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