For decades, horror fans have insisted that Phantasm is a misunderstood masterpiece. That its incoherence is deliberate. That its dreamlike logic is symbolic. That it’s art.
But here’s the truth:
You don’t actually understand Phantasm. You were just told you should. And because you once saw it on a battered VHS at 1am when you were too young to know better, you decided it meant something.
But over five increasingly incoherent films, what you actually get is a dimension-hopping mortician with a ball fetish, a lead character who dies more than once but never stays that way, and a soul patch-wearing ice cream vendor who somehow becomes the most competent character in horror history.
A Mortician, a Portal, and a Cargo Hold Full of Jawas
At some point in horror history, someone asked the question:
“What if Death… was really tall?”
And someone else said:
“Yes, and what if he throws flying silver balls that drill into your forehead and whisper secrets?”
And thus the Tall Man was born.
As best as anyone can tell (which is doing a lot of work), he started as Jebediah Morningside, a 19th-century undertaker who built a machine that opened interdimensional doorways. Naturally, these doorways led to a place where time doesn’t work, gravity is optional, and the dead are shrunk down into hooded, Star Wars Jawa clones to become unpaid demonic labor – Cool. Totally normal mortician stuff.
From then on, he:
Steals corpses.
Puts souls in orbs.
Turns into a shapeshifting woman to seduce teenage boys in graveyards, because… sure, why not.
Possibly builds an army across a desert hell dimension.
And says “BOOOOOOY” because apparently that’s scary.
Why does he do any of this? No idea. Souls? Maybe. Slaves? Possibly. But he doesn’t gloat, plot, or monologue. He doesn’t do anything except look iconic and appear randomly to warp gravity and throw a death ball at your face.
And his silver spheres? Legendary… but useless. One minute they’re blood drills. Next, they’re soul traps. Then they fly at Mach 7, explode, analyze DNA, eat faces, or act as iPods for evil memories. By Ravager, they’re the size of cities and summon apocalyptic ruin. I mean, why wouldn’t the murder marble evolve into the Death Star? They already ripped off Jawas, so why stop at just one element from Star Wars?
But remember: they never meant anything. They just look cool enough to distract you from the fact that the Tall Man is doing nothing. No goal. No plan. Just… hovering. Glaring. Vaguely absorbing souls. He’s just standing there… doing absolutely nothing, but hey—he’s tall, so let’s call that a plot.
A Quick Reality Check
Let’s pause here for a second. If you’re halfway through this and thinking, “No, actually, it’s deeper than that…” ask yourself this: what, exactly, is Phantasm about?
Don’t give me fog. Don’t give me vibes. Don’t say death is unknowable. That’s a disclaimer, not a theme. This series never gave you answers—because it never had any. And you mistook that silence for brilliance.
But let’s get into the mess that Is Phantasm.
This Is Where The Logic Dies
The first film, Phantasm (1979), is weird—but purposeful. It’s a dizzying mix of surrealism and grief horror, almost poetic, in a grindhouse sort of way. A kid named Mike sees The Tall Man lifting coffins like paperbacks, and things escalate quickly into brain drills and hallucinations involving interdimensional gates. It hums like a dream you only half remember but never fully forget—a creepy, grainy vision that feels like your childhood nightmares looked.
But then Phantasm II hits, and the franchise immediately starts unraveling. Mike’s now older, institutionalized, and played by a different actor—James LeGros, because Universal didn’t trust A. Michael Baldwin to carry the sequel. Mike escapes, Reggie returns, and now we’re in full-on apocalypse road movie mode. Flamethrowers. Gas masks. Exploding corpses. Tonally, it’s like Road Warrior got haunted.
The film ends—spoiler—with Mike being yanked into the void through the back of a hearse by the Tall Man. Cut to black. Boom. Dead. Right? Nope. Because logic’s not allowed.
In Phantasm III, Mike is back. He once again has his original actor, which is good—but he also has zero explanation as to why he’s alive again. He’s now being psychically influenced by the Tall Man. Worse: the dude has a literal golden sphere growing in his skull. That’s right—our boy Mike is now part-orb.
He glows. He telepathically speaks with the dead. And in some moments, he appears to be neither fully alive nor fully dead, but exists on some ghost-adjacent, vaguely symbolic plane of reality that feels like a franchise glitch no one patched. And he keeps aging, noticeably and awkwardly, between sequels—even though barely any time is supposed to have passed. But sure. Why not. Ghosts can age now. At this point, Phantasm just makes up physics as it goes.
By Phantasm IV, the rails are officially gone. Mike psychically contacts Reggie. Talks to people from beyond reality. Sometimes his face is another gate. Sometimes he’s a memory with bad lighting. His performance in Phantasm IV is basically a 90-minute shrug with flashbacks.
And through it all, Reggie is just… driving.
Ah, Reggie. Ice cream vendor by trade. Apocalypse cowboy by spiritual necessity.
Reggie Bannister wanders through this franchise like a man who woke up in a coffin and decided the day wasn’t a total loss. He’s armed with a four-barreled shotgun, a muscle car, a deadpan delivery system, and more underserved sex scenes than any horror character should legally possess.
Reggie doesn’t care about canon. He’s been shot, stabbed, exploded, seduced by numerous succubi, and once beaten with his own baldness by a demon bride—and yet he rolls on like a man still trying to save the friends he can’t quite remember clearly.
He is the emotional heart of a franchise that keeps trying to tell you emotion is optional. When Mike fades into philosophical oblivion, Reggie’s still chasing him. Still fighting. Still pulling a .45 out of his back pocket like death isn’t real unless he says it is.
By Phantasm IV, story structure is rubble. Narratives dissolve in deserts. Flashbacks blend into dreams. You get more Tall Man lore, technically, but it raises more questions than it answers. “Oh, he was once a kind old man named Jebediah?” you might say. Well, don’t get attached—by the next scene, he’s back to hissing Latin and tossing spheres into someone’s chest cavity.
And then there’s Ravager—a finale in the way comas have closure. Reggie is dying in a hospital. Or maybe a sphere. Or maybe a dream within a hallucination during a multiversal collapse. The series finally slows down and whispers, “What if none of this was real?” Which is either genius or an excuse to not resolve anything because the budget was gone.
There’s a moment with planet-sized spheres. CGI hellscapes. Reggie wandering between dimensions like a man just desperate to end the franchise on his terms. And to Ravager’s credit? It does end. It’s quiet. It’s sad. It ends not with resolution, but with the franchise looking at you and saying, “Feel something. That’s enough.”
But now it’s time. The fog has settled, the credits have rolled, and nothing’s clearer. So let’s not pretend—let’s just sum it all up and bury the body.
Let’s Burn Through the Saga in One Sentence Per Film
(Because that’s all they ever deserved):
Phantasm: “What if a dream about death had a budget of $10 and still slapped?”
Phantasm II: “Your favorite characters are back, but not really, and with flamethrowers.”
Phantasm III: “Mike is technically alive but emotionally already in the credits.”
Phantasm IV: “You wanted lore, so we made it up while filming.”
Ravager: “This is either a metaphor for dementia or the death of indie horror — maybe both.”
And maybe that’s the best trick Phantasm pulled. It convinced you that style was substance. That lore you invented yourself was canon. That silence was mystery, confusion was depth, and dreams don’t need to make sense. And honestly, maybe that worked once—on a late night, in the grain of a VHS tape.
But the older you get, the clearer it should be: this franchise was never about answers. It was about atmosphere. And eventually the fog clears.
Final Nail In The Phantasm Coffin
The Tall Man is never explained. Mike is never fully alive. Reggie is the only one who fights like he has something to lose. And you, the viewer? You gave it five chances and still convinced yourself it was saying something.
Phantasm doesn’t follow a formula. It erodes it—just as death erodes memory, just as grief warps time, just as orbs apparently contain souls, circuitry, and whatever else the plot needs that day. It’s a mess. A mood. A legacy that’s less about understanding and more about surrendering.
Because in the end, Phantasm never asked you to “get it.” It asked you to never question it.
So don’t flatter yourself.
You didn’t “understand” Phantasm.
You just stared at it long enough until it felt like meaning.
