The Phantom Museum2003

The Quay Brothers present a wonderful creaky haunted house ride through cabinets of arcane medical curiosities. If the abandoned sanatorium in the woods calls you for a nighttime visit, this film is for you.

Maybe it's just me, but I found the ending of this to be very frightening. This is a masterfully shot, lit, non-narrative avant-garde film that seems made from some dark, mysterious events in their lives. I feel they must have had some disturbances that they turned into a beautiful gift to the world.

The Quay Brothers use of animation and other worldliness adds to the surreal Medical Items that seem so archaic, but so close to our own. Makes for a fascinating short films that is a joy and horror to all the senses.

A great disappointment. Since I first discovered a working medical museum I have found them fascinating, scary and often very beautiful in ways I can't understand. But this movie is full of reproductions rather than preservations, and it is hard to find such reproductions seem treated as jokes. There are books about the collections of this particular museum (I own several) and the movie suffers in comparison.

EXQUISITE

The Quay Brothers own unusual take on Wellcomes' collection of "medical" oddities, mostly mannequins used for demonstration purposes, makes them seem more bizarre than they were meant to be. A wonderful odyssey.

Wow. Creepy but oddly soothing, this delightful little avant garde film is like nothing you have ever seen. As always, love the choice of music for the score; it really helps to create the atmosphere of the film. LOVE the Quay Brothers.