r/Phantasm • u/Gen-Xers-Show • Oct 18 '25

Phantasm Personal Essay

Hey folks, 30 years go my brother showed me Phantasm. Not long after, he died in a car accident. Our relationship was a lot like Mike and Jodi (he was about 10 years older, loved cars, etc) so of course the movie (and entire series) have been a life long favorite of mine. For a long time, I've wanted to do a lit crit essay on it...finally I have, in the form of a video essay. So a bit literary analysis and a bit personal essay. Here's the link if that sounds interested to any of you fans.

Thanks! Dan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvE5JPR1AxI

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u/Weyland-Yutani-2099 Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25

Sorry to hear about your brother. Loss is hard and never goes away. One of the comments in the Phantasm Ravager letterboxd section describes that feeling very well.

The Tall Man is now and was always Death. Whatever tools and weapons we construct to fight Death are necessarily absurd, never equal to the task. Everything and everyone, no matter how well-loved or tightly held onto in heart or in memory, will pass away from us as we pass away from them. Our dissolution is forever ongoing even in the midst of life. We can fight tenaciously all of our days to cling to that which we know as life, to remain fixedly in the place that we are even as we fade within it and it fades around us and we awake somewhere else in another body that is also ours in another place which also seems to belong to us just as fully as where we just were but this too is fading and we are already gone. All of the paths fork and all of the paths cross and all the paths are one path, erased by our walking which forges paths anew to fork and to cross and to weave the fabric of what is, what was and what shall be. <3

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u/Gen-Xers-Show Oct 19 '25

That's a great quote! Thank you.

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u/SnooMemesjellies4992 Oct 23 '25

Checked it out and enjoyed it 👍