Mike From PHANTASM Was Allowed To Be Angry
In a rare moment for a child protagonist in a horror film Mike was allowed to be angry in the original PHANTASM…
Horror has a type when it comes to kids. The kid sees something nobody else sees. The kid gets possessed. The kid gets taken. The kid draws a disturbing picture and a concerned adult has to figure out what it means. The kid is a haunted little antenna. A problem to be solved by someone taller.
Danny Torrance shines, but the violence in The Shining happens around him. Regan spends most of The Exorcist strapped to a bed while something else drives. Carol Anne is a voice in a television set waiting to be retrieved. Cole Sear sees dead people and, helpfully, tells a licensed professional.
These kids are scared. These kids are targets. Almost nobody ever let one of them be pissed off.
Meet Mike Pearson
Mike Pearson from the original PHANTASM in 1979…
Mike is thirteen when Phantasm starts. His parents are dead. His older brother Jody is now his legal guardian and is also, quietly, planning to ditch him with an aunt so he can get back to chasing women in bars. The only other adult in Mike's life is Reggie, an ice cream man with a ponytail.
That is the entire grief infrastructure.
Mike at Morningside chopping off the Tall Man’s hand!
You can imagine how most movies would handle this kid. Mike cries on a bed. Mike asks Jody why people have to die. A soft-focus dream of his mom shows up around the hour mark. Eventually Mike hugs Jody and a string section politely arrives.
Grief doesn't knock politely
Mike from the original PHANTASM brandishing a weapon…
Here's what movies keep getting wrong about kids and grief.
Adults get a script. Casseroles show up. People say "processing." There's a therapist, a pamphlet, a vocabulary. Kids get none of that. Kids, especially boys, especially boys in 1979, get told to be brave. Get told their loved one is "in a better place." Get asked how they're "holding up," a phrase specifically designed to make a child say "fine" and leave the room.
So the grief comes out sideways. Obsession. Anger at the wrong things. Stupid, dangerous, inexplicable stuff at night, because sitting in your room with the feeling is somehow worse than crawling through a mausoleum with it.
Every adult who's ever known a grieving kid knows this. Phantasm is one of the only horror films from its era that seems to know it too.
The Tall Man works as a monster because he's death in a black suit. But the chase works because the chase is the grief. Mike cannot leave it alone. The movie never asks him to.
Still swinging
The end of the original PHANTASM..
By the end of Phantasm nothing is fixed. Jody is gone. The Tall Man is still out there. None of the adults in Mike's life have come through for him. He's still swinging.
Because when you're thirteen and everyone you love is in the ground, the first thing through the door isn't sadness. Sadness is slower. Sadness shows up later, in your twenties, in traffic, for no reason. What shows up first, when you're a kid, is a white-hot feeling that something has to answer for this.
