Phantasm: Ravager

I'd heard the movie's reputation as unsatisfying. I knew to lower the bar going in, and I did. And I'm still disappointed. It's fun having the crew back again after EIGHTEEN YEARS. But the large gap built up expectations, and this movie struggles to pay off any of it. We finally get an answer as to how The Tall Man keeps regenerating. But beyond that? An attempt to capture the original's unsettled feeling, but leaving the movie a disjointed mess, courtesy of THREE plots (timelines? dimensions? hallucinations?) running concurrently. An ending that boggles the mind and, potentially, insults the viewer at the same time, depending on how you interpret it. Sub-B-movie-level acting. Special effects that would look bad on a PlayStation 1. There's a grand ambition here. It feels not like the ultimate chapter, but the first half of it. Graded like that, it would be acceptable. Not great, by any means, but decent. But it isn't. This is meant to be the end. This is meant to round things out, bring it to the end. And it answers almost nothing, leaves you with more questions than you walked in, and ends the saga with a shrug. I appreciate its reach, but that FAR exceeded its grasp.