Budget: $3 million
Directed By: Don Coscarelli
Due to weirdly good performance of Phantasm it was inevitable that a sequel would show up. When your film does $12 million on a budget of $300,000 it's a done thing. It was allocated a measely $3 million budget by Universal, though this was still massive compared to any of the other films budgets.
The weird thing is, it took almost 9 years for this sequel to show up. Why?
Don had thought the ending was quite conclusive to the first film and couldn't see any way a sequel could be made from what had happened.
(Trying not to spoil it here) so it took him this long along with some other collaborators to come up with a suitable way to start the next film.
That idea was to start it right at the end of the last one and have what happened by slightly retconned at this ones beginning.
Unfortunately due to being such a long time coming some of the original cast wasn't available for some reason or another. This was one of the main points of upset for some people who came to the sequel, it threw them a bit to see a different actor playing a lot of the old characters. Mainly Mike but a lot of people new and old to the franchise have come to just accept this now.
We join Mike now 19 in a mental asylum as people didn't believe him about the all the initial Tall Man stuff that happened. Faking his recovery he manages to get himself released where he goes to Reggie to get help in exposing the Tall Man once and for all. Oh it is shown in a flashback how they all escaped/survived the original films ending too.
A new character is also introduced in the form of Liz Reynolds who has weird visions of Mike and the Tall Man. She tells Mike to come and find her in a prophetic dream sequence.
Reggie is quite disbelieving of Mike (despite the last film), but he shows him empty coffins he believes in his story again. They then go on a road trip, though only after all of Reggie's family dies in a freak explosion that Mike foretells.
Reggie creates the infamous quad barreled shotgun (that hardly gets any use in most of the films) and they continue on the way. Liz's grandfather dies then at the funeral her sister vanishes, she goes to look for her but is scared by the Tall Man and flees. The residing priest (Father Meyers) finds out about the Tall Mans plans and tries to stop him bringing Liz's grandfather back to life. He fails and the grandfather takes Liz's grandmother that night.
She's messaged by the Tall Man in a mental image to come rescue her grandmother, Mike awakens while they near to Liz's town only to discover Reggie has picked up a woman who looks a lot like a terrifying visage they saw earlier on the road. Liz goes to the mortuary to find her Grandmother but is stopped by father Meyers who is then killed by one of the flying spheres.
Reggie and Mike come a little to late as the Tall Man has captured Liz and escapes with her, he pushes them both off the road with his hearse. After this it basically becomes a save Liz from the Tall Man rest of film. Which I won't spoil the ending as usual here on THN.
I didn't mind this as a sequel and with more modern TV replacing actors in things has become more of a mainstay in films and series's of today. It does well to explain more into the Tall Man and his origins than the first film too. THN awards Phantasm 2 a solid 3 out of 5 stars.
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