Synopsis

When sisters Jenny and Lisa Pailey arrive in the isolated Colorado town of Snowfield, they find its residents dead or missing. Joined by a troubled sheriff and an eccentric scholar, they uncover evidence of an ancient, shape-shifting entity that has erased entire civilizations. As the creature turns the town into a deadly hunting ground, the survivors must discover its weakness before it escapes.

Factoids & Trivia

• Dean Koontz adapted his own 1983 novel for the screenplay. The movie shifts the story toward science-fiction horror, while many of the novel's references to H. P. Lovecraft were removed.

• Producer Joel Soisson reportedly spent about ten years pursuing the screen rights before the project was established at Miramax and assigned to its Dimension Films label.

• Principal photography took place in Georgetown, Colorado, with the Hotel de Paris Museum standing in for the bakery and hotel seen in the story.

• The production underwent more than five sets of reshoots in 1997. Its planned October 24, 1997, release was postponed until January 23, 1998, and additional post-production work continued close to release.

• The film's fictional explanation involving flatworms learning from what they consume was inspired by real behavioral experiments, although the movie presents the results more definitively than the science supports.

• The theatrical poster used a composite image assembled from promotional photographs associated with other Miramax productions, rather than a single photo session for this film.

• The movie earned a lasting piece of pop-culture notoriety through the 2001 comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which popularized the line "Affleck, you da bomb in Phantoms, yo!"

• Despite its later cult reputation, Phantoms was poorly received by critics and earned approximately $5.8 million against a reported production budget of $12 million to $16 million.