Phantoms of the Fog Review from Filmiracle Productions!

There’s truly something magical about Chris Milewski and his wonderful world of Italian inspired works. The guy who, as I stated in my older review, (here) he almost out-Italians the Italians. Nothing has changed Phantoms of the Fog. This bloke salutes the golden age of atmospheric horror and crops up in a few anthology flicks in the underground. You know his style without reading the credits or if you walk into a film blind. Check out this interview with Chris Milewski I chucked together a while back for more information…

So, onto his latest gem, Phantoms of the Fog. Cue a mandatory super cool soundtrack which instantly transports you back to those incredible years when the Italians ruled the horror genre, and here we go with shots of the woods – oh, I mean, a jungle because we’re in Vietnam circa 1966. A soldier awakes and blinks against the daylight. He gets up and has a wander to get his bearings. Oh my God, that music is sublime. I can feel Andrea Bianchi and his Burial Ground as inspiration for the sounds here and there. Heaven for me, I tell you.

Suddenly our soldier hears movement and crouches down. We can identify some Fulci-style zombie moans as he looks around nervously. Seeing no one is around, he ventures over to some bits and bobs. A water canister is full of maggots. Yeah, it’s an Italian inspired thing so there has to be maggots somewhere. Then he hears the radio. No use, he can’t get through to the voice.

Eerie purple night filters on and he wanders to a river. Seeing a decomposing corpse nearby. Uncovering a Vietcong trap via a large nail through his foot, our soldier is suddenly confronted by the corpse standing up, breathing heavily and blatantly maggot-ridden, akin to the earlier mentioned Burial Ground. It approaches and he has to try and free himself. However it appears that something else is going on…

As per usual, the choice of lighting, the way the camera moves, and how everything is dreamlike are the films absolute charms. Chris has upped his game, wherein, before his shorts were more compacted — this has widened itself in a way, it just feels bigger and has a neat twist which really does resurrect the classics.

It’s as simple as this; you cannot watch a load of old-school rental movies from Italy whilst eating pasta and think you can make a film like that. Chances are it’d come over as a shallow parody. No, you must feel them under your skin and spend a lifetime watching them, along with Euro horrors. Chris has done just that. He is capable of merging his influences into visions purely his own, and as usual cheekily using many Euro sounding pseudonyms on the credits when it’s standard play to be his work. Sorry, Chris, I like to chant your name (after the review I wrote for Violets Bloom at an Empty Grave, I did end up using it as a mantra) so I write it all over the Severed credits.

Central chap, Ryan Fargo, as the soldier performs well, as does Milewski regular, Karen Lynn Widdoss (under a ton of rotten make-up mind you). She is fantastic as per usual. The third member, Terry Reilly, another regular, isn’t in it long enough to judge too deeply but his shocked expression radiating fright is pretty cool.

Phantoms of the Fog joins the best of his standalone movies, and his contribution to POE 4: The Black Cat as an idea for a short film marathon. It wouldn’t take long of course — his creations are tiny yet packed with so much menace and their bloody rotted teeth are bared and inviting you inside.

MOVIE

Overall Score 4

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Phantoms of the Fog Review from Filmiracle Productions!

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