Teresa Reviews Phantom (2021) Hjerson TV episode

Teresa reviews Phantom (2021) Hjerson and despite the dysfunction wealthy family hijinks keeps fixating on the dead guy in the chicken suit.

(c)2024 by Teresa Peschel

Agatha Adjacent? 1 hired killer

Yew berries figure in the plot, like they did in A Pocket Full of Rye. Otherwise nothing.

Quality of movie: 3 hired killers

Plot holes galore, logical inconsistencies, and unbelievable murder methods mean you won’t wait until the film’s over to dissect it for flaws. But it was still fun to watch.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

Agatha would have never written this, and not just because of the incompetent hired assassin using a chicken suit to dispose of the body. I’ll get to that later, along with what younger son who’s fascinated with violent chemical reactions, i.e., fire, had to say about how impossible that body disposal method was.

No, the real issue is that when Agatha wrote a mystery, you got to know the people involved and why they did or didn’t murder the victim. She didn’t waste time probing Poirot or Miss Marple’s private life or innermost thoughts. The closest she came to spending pages and pages upon the detectives was with Tommy and Tuppence. You got to know them extremely well, but their story was the story. Capturing master spies was secondary.

When Poirot or Miss Marple were called to the scene of the crime, it was to solve the murder by learning as much as possible about the victim and the victim’s circle. If you know them, you know who had to have done it. They could then work it out logically and let the police unearth the clues necessary for a successful trial.

The underlying problem with this method for successful TV series is that you watch the show largely to see the stars interact. Solving the mystery, heck, having a well-plotted mystery, is secondary. Like Tommy and Tuppence, the ongoing drama between Sven Hjerson and Klara Sandberg is more important than any murders or complex schemes for world domination they unearth.

This two-part episode shows this structural problem in spades. Oscar, the elderly hippie who lives near Sven’s dead mother’s hotel, is on the beach getting ready to surf in … November? With snow on the ground but some leaves still on the trees? In the Baltic Sea which must be about 34°???? He’s Finnish so okay. While Oscar’s prepping for his polar bear plunge by swilling vodka, an incoherent man staggers out of the woods onto the shore. He’s been beaten up and is wearing — head-to-toe — a bright yellow chicken suit, like a shorter, fatter Big Bird.

The man whispers a cryptic phrase to Oscar: “Fantome. Fantome.” Oscar races for help. When he returns, the man in the chicken suit is gone. The police are disbelieving. Then Oscar gets shot while posting notices about a missing man in a chicken suit, proving something’s up.

The plot is already ludicrous because who stuffs a victim into a chicken suit? Where did the chicken suit come from? The tiny isolated island of Åland doesn’t look like it supports a thriving costume rental business. Even dopier is whispering “fantome.” Not a name. Not a useful fact.

Sven gets involved because he’s concerned about Oscar’s safety. Klara’s there because she needs Sven for her reality TV show and her homelife is boring when it’s not unhappy. Too much reality TV makes you think daily high drama is normal.

They start asking around and learn about the Åkerman family, the richest on the island. Why, if this family is so rich, do they stick with boring, tiny, frozen Åland? You won’t learn. You do learn that Harriet, the second wife of recently deceased Karl (supposedly from cancer) had a long history with Sven. She still calls him Svempa, an affectionate nickname.

Harriet, being Karl’s second, younger wife, must cope with Karl’s adult children by his long-dead first wife. Harald, the oldest, is a doctor who fancies taxidermy. Is he married? How does he feel about his sibs and stepmother? You’ll learn nothing. Daughter Alice hated her father and despises her brothers and, presumably, her stepmother but you won’t learn why. Youngest son Svante is a drunk in his early 20s (why?), adores old cars, and is conducting a torrid affair with the local priest, Juha. That’s all you’ll get.

If Agatha wrote this, you’d learn a lot more than these bare bones. A school of red herrings would prove any of Karl Åckerman’s family could have killed him. Or servants. Or mistresses. Or betrayed partners. Once Klara begins investigating online, she quickly discovers Åckerman had extensive holdings in the landlocked Central African Republic. But you don’t meet any disaffected former employees or swindled natives from Africa.

Karl found God and decided to give away all his money to do the Lord’s Work. The family naturally would object as they’re used to living in the lap of luxury. There’s no mystery. A very rich man dies suspiciously quickly when he discusses rewriting his will to disinherit his family. Someone in the family did it, with the tacit approval of the rest of the family. The cleverness of the mystery comes in disguising this skeleton.

But you don’t get that story.

Instead, you get the most incompetent professional assassin ever, hired by Karl’s would-be widow who must then take matters in her own hands when the assassin proves to not be worth whatever she paid him. We’ll start with the murder of the man in the chicken suit. He (and he’s never named, another potential source of plot gone begging) is Karl’s ghostwriter of his tell-all memoirs. Ghostwriter. The ship is named Fantome. Get it? The ghostwriter gets killed because he’s got enough material to finish Karl’s memoirs and bring permanent shame and dishonor on the family. They’d still inherit loads of money but that’s … not enough? The infamy would result in lawsuits and tax issues? You won’t learn.

What you will learn is that drugging a victim (maybe?) followed by stuffing him into a chicken suit (wouldn’t this have been easier to get the victim to do this at gunpoint?), lets you burn the body so there’s no evidence left. Not so much as a flake of ash.

As if.

Having experimented with rapid exothermic chemical reactions outside in our firepit, Dear Son had this to say. “It is remarkably difficult to burn damp materials even with accelerants. Plastic melts before it burns and you’d expect blackened resin droplets, charred bones, and probably a layer of burnt flesh beneath the bones where oxygen couldn’t get to it. If the fire was hot enough to destroy the body, you’d expect a cone of withered leaves directly overhead. The smell of smoke would be obvious as plastic doesn’t burn clean.”

Sven Hjerson should have noticed these facts, along with char and ash in the shallow depression. The biggest bones would still survive as would teeth.

The script made the professional assassin stupid, because the obvious way to remove a body from an island in the Baltic Sea is by taking it out to sea, weighting it down (the lead from the bullets is a plus), and throwing it overboard.

But no. You get a chicken suit.

To compound the silliness, at the climax the camera pans across a second chicken suit underneath a draped table at Harriet’s house. Is this chicken suit meant for Sven? Does Harriet keep a stock of chicken suits? Or does this chicken suit, based on its obvious roundness, still contain the body of the ghostwriter because there’s no physical evidence that it was ever burned in the first place? And how about what a terrible shot the assassin is!

Even so, it’s a fun episode as long as you pretend no mystery is involved.