No sooner has Ben Affleck indied his way into film superhunkdom than he's starring in the kind of bomb that traditionally marks the twilight of an actor's career. Go figure. In Phantoms (adapted from the 1983 Dean Koontz thriller) Affleck plays a superhunky small-town sheriff singlehandedly fending off the forces of unspeakable evil. Well, not quite singlehandedly: he has a pair of unflappable sisters to help him, and Peter O'Toole in the unspeakably implausible role of an epidemics expert turned tabloid journalist turned co-savior of humankind.

Phantoms is derivative (Tremors and Aliens are well represented), and dumb enough to be more hilarious than scary. There are some creepy moments, especially in the first half, but the film soon slips into a kind of grim silliness, reaching a toe-curling climax when the unspeakable evil turns out to be, in effect, a very old, publicity-seeking oil slick (no, it's not played by Burt Reynolds) that's defeated only when O'Toole double-dog-dares it out of hiding. Or is the evil defeated? This is the question Phantoms dares to ask but can't be bothered to answer. At the Copley Place and the Fresh Pond and in the suburbs.