I've been burning through Dean Koontz books lately, and one of his books that got movienated was Phantoms. I remember really enjoying this book when I read it at 18ish, and I was a little meh on it at 43 and noticed more the simplistic writing and lack of accuracy in the firearms... but about the only thing I ever heard about this movie was Jason Mewes yelling to Ben Affleck, "Phantoms was the bomb, yo!" I know it was intended to be sarcastic, but I never saw the movie, so I watched it today on Netflix.
It's pretty bad.
I can say it followed the book close enough to be called accurate, but I think it suffered from a budget not big enough to do it right. It deals with a mystery of a small town suddenly depopulated, and......... just damn. I don't want to get into too many spoilers. I would be interested in hearing how confusing it was (or not?) for someone who has never read the book. I at least knew what was happening and what to expect.
The lack of budget isn't the only problem. There's stupid sound editing, and there's a scene when a bat flies up against a window, and 4 or 5 characters go full Predator on it.... remember the scene with the mercs put about 30k rounds down range, defoliating the jungle for 50 yards? Yeah, they spend a good 10 seconds unloading every weapon they have because a bat fluttered against a window. I don't even think I am exaggerating, that's how it went down.
I also enjoyed it when the history professor knew how to run and conduct biological testing in a state-of-the-art mobile military science lab. "They gave me a tour on the way here" was his explanation. They gave him a tour and not only did he know how to glean the biochemistry of a tissue sample, but he knew offhand of an engineered bacterium that could counteract it, and even what generation of experimentation it was in.
Seriously, I think they ran out of money and couldn't afford to keep paying the actors ho were actually the biochemists.
Just a really bad movie. Watch and enjoy.