*The following will contain major spoilers from the entire Phantasm series*
Over the past couple days I had went back and watched the entire Phantasm series. That means I started with the original from 1979 film and I went up to the 1998 finale, Oblivion. I’m not the type of person to just take weird movies like Phantasm at face value, and given the material how could you? So I got to thinking just what does it all REALLY mean? Was Mike and Reggie really just doing battle with The Tall Man for years and years? Or was there a much deeper meaning that was right in front of our faces the whole time?
Phantasm is a film that contradicts it’s self..a lot. The biggest trip up of this is with Reggie and his handling of the Tall Man’s portal. Reggie more than once touches both poles in the portal to cause a riff in the workings of the system. The second time he does this is during the last part of Phantasm II. During this scene, Mike informs Reggie that he can do it, basing that the statement over the fact that Reggie had “done it before”. Wait..wait..wait..WHAT? I thought the first film was a dream? Reggie did it in the first film and Reggie also died in the first film (or looked dead). But at the end of the film it turns out we had seen a dream by young Mike. Reggie wasn’t dead and was in fact now the person taking care of Mike. He insisted that Mike was dreaming. So how does Reggie, who isn’t just told by Mike that he can ping the portal, remember pinging the portal if the first film was in fact a dream?
One thing we know for sure is this Mike’s brother Jody is dead. And so are Mike’s parents. They all died really close to one another and these are events in Mike’s life that he is having a hard time dealing with. As the series goes on and on and seems to get weirder and weirder I think the answers to what is going on isn’t as obvious (or un-obvious) as it appears to be. During the closing moments of Oblivion (Phantasm 4), while Reggie and Mike are doing battle with The Tall Man for what has become the last time, there are a few things to keep in mind. Reggie asks what The Tall Man wants with Mike only for the Tall Man to reply “It’s in his head”. We then see The Tall Man go to Mike and remove a gold sphere ball from his head. Then this leads to our closing scene which shows young Mike jumping in the ice cream truck with Reggie and riding off into the darkness. This has been our closing shot of Phantasm as a whole. And as confusing as it might seem, perhaps it’s just what the Tall Man said that makes it all add up. It’s all in Mike’s head.
The biggest clue to this could come during a small line of dialogue from Mike’s brother Jody in Phantasm 4. After it is learned that Jody is working with The Tall Man and Mike is forced to kill Jody, Jody’s last words to Mike are, “I died in the wreck”. So could that be it?? Could the entire Phantasm series 1-4 all be the cooked up events of a young kid who’s been unable to deal with the loss of his older brother? And could the ending with Tall Man removing the sphere from Mike’s head and then the shot of young Mike and Reggie driving off be symbolic of Mike finally learning to accept the loss and moving on? While most people seem to want another Phantasm, I think I’m content believing this and accepting Oblivion as the franchise’s ending. As eerie and haunting as it all is, it’s really a happy ending if you look at it like this.
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