Editorials
‘Phantom of the Mall’ and ‘The Initiation’ – A Slasher Double Feature to Celebrate 45 Years of “Mall Horror”
George A. Romero’s elite classic Dawn of the Dead turns 45 years old this year, while Zack Snyder’s remake approaches its own 20th anniversary. But the two different versions of Dawn of the Dead are far from the only two horror movies set inside shopping malls.
“Mall Horror” is basically its own subgenre, and below are two under-discussed gems in the shopping mall arena that are well worth your time as you celebrate the 45th anniversary of the greatest “Mall Horror” movie ever made – and the one that started it all…
Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge (1989)
Directed by Richard Friedman
By the late 80s, the slasher boom had all but dried up. That’s not to say there aren’t gems to be mined from the era, but the heyday had passed. Shot in the famous Sherman Oaks Galleria (featured in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Commando, Chopping Mall, and many more films), Phantom of the Mall is a very fun, very odd duck of the 80s slashers cycle. If you couldn’t tell by the title, it’s a horror riff on the classic Phantom of the Opera – this time, y’know, in a mall.
All of the essential elements of the Phantom story are here, or at least made reference to. The kick comes from how the film uses the mall gimmick to twist the story’s iconography. I knew I was in for a treat when we saw our Phantom (Derek Rydell) make his iconic mask from the face of a store mannequin. He slinks and sneaks about the mall through the ventilation, and uses the environment against his prey with ease. He even has an elaborate lair.
Eric’s Revenge barrels along with an easy pace, tossing all kinds of cornball fun at the audience. The slasher trappings mostly make up the first half of the film, with some of the slayings being amusingly intricate in their staging. From there it’s a game of figuring out the central mystery. Why is Eric seeking revenge? Will he reconnect with the love that was taken from him? And is that Pauly Shore in an early supporting role?!
Phantom of the Mall has that intangible charm to it that keeps genre fans so enamored with the 80s. It’s sincere in its attempt to update the source material for a (then) modern horror audience. The love story between Eric and Melody is actually kind of sweet in a saccharine, soap opera way. As cheeseball as it is, I actually felt for the guy despite knowing every beat of the overall story – because y’know, we’ve seen it a dozen times before.
Genre fans should keep an eye out for Ken Foree in a small but fun role as well as schlock king Gregory Scott Cummins (Action USA, Caged Fury, Stone Cold) as a sleazy heavy.
Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge likely won’t make anyone’s list of top 80s slashers, but it has got everything where it counts and runs the gamut on tone – it’s a violent slasher, a melodramatic teen romance, and a crime thriller all mixed together in a brew that goes down surprisingly easy.
The Initiation (1984)
Directed by Larry Stewart
This is cheating. The Initiation doesn’t take place in a mall per say…just a big ass department store. Think of it as a baby mall.
On the surface Larry Stewart’s The Initiation features most of the 80s slasher clichés – sororities, pledges, pranks, escaped mental patients, and a preoccupation with sexual activities. Not that that’s a bad thing.
The actually initiation itself is built up as the film’s climax, where the pledges must break into the baby mall in question and steal a security guard uniform. The constant referencing and lead up the initiation ritual adds a nice element of tension building to the climax and helps in making the department store setting more than just an arbitrary place to stage some slashing.
The Initiation stands out from the pack in a few surprising ways. The film does the work to get the audience invested in its protagonist Kelly (Daphne Zuniga) as well as effectively pulling off a last act shock twist that actually shocks. Well, the genre savvy can maybe guess the twist ending, but either I’m too arrogant or easily bamboozled, because I was sure I pegged the ending from the beginning. Turns out I was wrong. I raise my glass in appreciation of the film the first time I watched it for actually pulling the wool over my eyes.
Zuniga’s Kelly is a very likable slasher protagonist. She’s dealing with childhood trauma, intense nightmares, taxing therapy, and those damned Mean Girl Sorority Sisters on top of it all. Oh, and the little problem of a slasher killer knocking people off. The film takes its time to make Kelly a believable character, especially by the genre’s standards. Much of slasher fandom is the spectator sport aspect to it – where we may not particularly like or care about the victims, we just wanna see some gnarly kills. I was invested in Kelly and most of the supporting characters were genuinely enjoyable, which actually made me care a little when some of them bit the dust.
Largely well acted with some great kills, likable characters, and a well executed twist, The Initiation is one of the more unsung slashers of the early 80s – and it even makes a good triple feature with The House On Sorority Row and Happy Birthday To Me.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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