The Frighteners

1996

Even though I’ve never sat down to watch all of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I still understand why people love Peter Jackson. His visions far exceed the special effects world he lives in, but he still tries to make it believable. And in the situation of The Frighteners, if he can’t make it believable, he’s going to make it so ridiculous with a story so entertaining, that you don’t care.

The film begins with what seems to be a poltergeist ruining the wallpaper and tripping people up on old rugs. So from the start, we know that we are not dealing with a lazy ghost. In fact, he seems a little ADD, not exactly focusing on one area of the house or the terrified woman’s body. He gets distracted, which is fine. He was human.

Michael J. Fox’s character enters as a con man who uses his talents to talk to ghosts as his way to make money. He employs spirits from the local graveyard to be his lackeys. While this is going on, the town is gripped with dozens of unexplained deaths since the explained deaths of a mass murderer 30 years prior. Even though the killer was executed, we soon learn that something keeps his death tally rising.

Fox’s character doesn’t really want anything to do with that. He’s just a grieving widow (of course) living in an unfinished dream house (metaphor) with no real prospects or hope for the future (obviously). Until he sees numbers on people’s foreheads who are about to die.

As a psychic telling the police who is about to die, even small time best friends get suspicious and sick the feds on you (and this was pre-9/11). An FBI agent who looks like Hitler with a Vitamin D deficiency is assigned his case. The agent, Milton Dammers, has become so paranoid from working undercover with occult and violent religious sects for so long that he is now afraid of women. This is apparently a side-effect of working in the paranormal for so long. Not sure what you’re digging at there, Mr. Jackson.

The movie continues with the introduction of ghosts with comedic relief, ghosts who get in the way, and ghosts who just want to kill everyone. So their world is pretty much the same as the living, except they never get to change their clothes. Of course in the end, the demon and his lover are sent to hell and the good spirits who remain can finally get some rest without some con man waking them up to make a quick buck.

It wasn’t a frightening movie, and the special effects were on par with Casper. However, this definitely falls in the sub-genre of comedy-horror (different from campy-horror, wayyyy different from satircal-horror). I doubt it would even come close to be an R-rated movie today. The jokes were funny for the sake of being funny, and the violence was ridiculous by the end. However, It was a nice reprieve in between my “Frighteners” of movies titles.

Shut up, WIB, I’m not even thinking about you…