a review of 鬼追人4

I'd heard that this was kind of the odd man out of the Phantasm series, and my viewing mostly bore that out. Eschewing the quasi-remake structure, road-movie episodics, and random sidekicks of the previous two films, this entry attempts to paint more of a serious psychological portrait of its main characters. Much of this is done via flashbacks to the timeframe of the first film, accomplished through a surprisingly large amount of unused leftover footage shot by Coscarelli 15+ years prior. The rest is basically an extended frame story that tries and mostly fails to keep us invested in the relationship between Mike and undead brother Jody, as well as the unclear origins of the Tall Man. But then we end up back at the very same place as the ending of part III, not feeling particularly wiser for having experienced IV. These movies are a fun thing to re-discover all these years later, but ultimately I think I'm invested more for the kooky randomness than for anything in particular about the characters or mythos.