Racecar driver Cutter McCullough comes back from the dead to avenge his death in a fiery crash seventeen years ago. McCullough goes after his arch rival JJ Sawyer (a solid and likeable performance by Greg Evigan) and anyone else who stands in his way.

Director Terry Ingram relates the enjoyable and engrossing story at a constant pace, treats the silly premise with admirable seriousness, stages the exciting vehicular carnage with rip-roaring aplomb, and delivers several cool moments of graphic gore. The sound acting by the sturdy cast keeps this movie humming: Nicole Eggert as the feisty Tammy, Brenna O'Brien as sassy and sarcastic teenager Jesse, Winston Rekert as the amiable Sheriff Hodges, Chad Willett as easygoing mechanic Cliff, and Luciana Monroe as the tough Deputy Monroe. A really fun little flick.

I have seen far worse movies than Phantom Racer, even though I do think the movie could've been much better. It does have redeeming values certainly. A couple of the attacks are actually gory and quite fun. But it was the three leads that really elevated. Greg Egvian still has a lot of charisma, Nicole Eggbert shows good chemistry with him and I do think she is better than she was in Baywatch and Brenna O'Brien despite her rather clichéd role has a couple of amusing wise-cracks. The film looks decent too, nothing extraordinary to see but much more than the usual hackneyed editing and fake effects I've seen in too many movies of late. However, the characters are never developed sufficiently enough, they are stereotypical(the sheriff, the teen) and some like the sheriff are so annoying it is difficult to identify with them. Even after someone dies they don't act in ways you'd associate someone to react in those circumstances. The script is very formulaic as well, there are a lot of car chases, action scenes and attempts to destroy the thing but it all amounts to little and none of it is particularly exciting. The dialogue is trite, especially in the "finding out who your dad is" subplot, which never did ring true to me due to how forced everything was. The story, not helped by the lame climax and the evil presence being far too obvious from the get go, never really grabbed me and came across as silly in places such as the people cruising down the road and somehow the car can kill people in really wild ways yet can come away unscathed with no explanation as to how. Apart from a couple of good ones, a lot of the action and killings while inventive on paper look very average on screen. In conclusion, could have been far worse mainly because I liked the leads but it was too silly and formulaic with characters I didn't care for for me to really sink my teeth into it. 5/10 Bethany Cox

PHANTOM RACER (2009) is the SyFy Channel version of the 'possessed car' films that were all the rage back in the 1980s, CHRISTINE being the most well known. You'd be better off watching that one than risking this low budget slice of inanity. A tragedy occurs when one driver is killed during a high-speed race, and seventeen years later his car reappears seemingly tracking down people who were involved in the events, including his former rival and his girlfriend. Very little plot here, just B-movie specialists Nicole Eggert and Greg Evigan going through the motions. There's plenty of action and death in the form of pursuits and the like, but none of it is very believable; it's too cheap-looking and silly for that.