Phantasm V: Ravager - A pretty mess

I guess the fifth part of a horror franchise is an odd place to start, but in case you don't know - or skip the kind of 'on-the-nose' recap at the beginning of the film, a tall, creepy old man has been using the dead to create an army of inter-dimensional dwarves who are trying to take over the world.  The only man standing in his way is 'Reggie' - a balding, overweight ex ice cream man, wielding a shotgun with four barrels.

Yes, it's quite 'out there,' but - in my opinion - was pretty good for the first three. 'Part IV' was a bit of a drag and I felt obliged to watch the final outing.  We meet Reggie as he wanders through the desert in search of either the tall man, or his friends who he's lost along the way.  From there he encounters one person after the next who he either has to kill, or gets killed by flying silver balls the like to drill into your brain (yes, they're a 'thing' in 'Phantasm').  However, soon he finds out this may not be 'reality' and everything starts going downhill.

The film jumps around between time periods and even dimensions.  I know it's supposed to be jarring for our protagonist, Reggie, and makes him question what's real and what's not.  But it just came across as too 'all-over-the-place' to really be a coherent story that the viewer could follow.  Cast members from the previous films return, but sometimes they die and sometimes they come back to life - again, making you question which parts of the story are supposed to be real and which are just dreams.

The tall man himself, as usual played by the ever-creepy Angus Scrimm, also comes back, but part of his sinister fell was his age to begin with (and that was back in 1979!).  Now, in 2016 he's starting to show his age and, although he does his best, just doesn't seem as menacing as he once was.

The last quarter kind of picked up for me.  I won't claim to understand which parts were real and which were just some sort of coma-induced nightmares, but the special effects were pretty good in creating a hellish apocalyptic world and the attack from giant balls was kind of neat.

As usual with the franchise it was well directed and Reggie is always worth a watch.  It was just too all-over-the-place to be fully enjoyed.  My advice: stick to parts I-III.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights