director
Peter Jackson
screenwriters
Frances
Walsh
Peter Jackson
producers
Peter Jackson
Jamie Selkirk
cinematographers
John Blick
Alun Bollinger
music
Danny Elfman
editor
Jamie Selkirk
cast
Michael J. Fox (Frank Bannister)
Trini Alvarado (Dr. Lucy Lynskey)
Peter Dobson (Ray Lynskey)
John Astin (The Judge)
Jeffrey Combs (Milton Dammers)
Dee Wallace-Stone (Patricia Ann Bradley)
Jake Busey (Johnny Bartlett)
Chi McBride (Cyrus)
Jim Fyfe (Stuart)
Troy Evans (Sheriff Walt Perry)
Julianna McCarthy (Old Lady Bradley)
R. Lee Ermey (1st Sergeant Hiles)
Melanie Lynskey (Deputy)
Peter Jackson (Man with Piercings)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 110m
u.s.
release: 7/19/96
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other peter
jackson films
reviewed on this website:
- king
kong
the lord of the rings:
- the
fellowship of the ring
- the
two towers
- the
return of the king
see also:
- peter
jackson: the films
(overview of his work,
with brief reviews of each movie)
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Right at the beginning, when
the camera dives through a hole in the floor and chases a woman
down a flight of stairs, you know this isn't the usual summer
bash. The Frighteners, directed by the hyperactive New
Zealander Peter Jackson (who also wrote it with longtime collaborator
and companion Frances Walsh), is relentlessly hectic and shamelessly
melodramatic. You either go along for the ride or get out and
walk. In all, it's the boldest ride of the summer so far -- athletic,
prankish, eye-popping. Every frame drips with Jackson's moviemaking
fever.
The script, which Jackson and Walsh initially sent to producer
Robert Zemeckis as a Tales from the Crypt movie, occasionally
betrays its derivative origins. The Frighteners is part
Ghostbusters, part Beetlejuice, with sprinkles
of Badlands and Poltergeist. Jackson never intended
to direct it, but Zemeckis put him in charge anyway. Smart move.
Like Brian De Palma, Sam Raimi, and Robert Rodriguez, Jackson
pumps energy into clichés until they explode. We've seen
some of the plot elements before, but never quite like this.
Michael J. Fox, sporting a hip new brush-cut, is Frank Bannister,
a bogus "psychic investigator" with a clever racket:
he works with three ghosts who haunt houses and conveniently
leave Frank's business card behind. Frank has been busy lately,
because people are dropping like flies all around town, their
hearts mysteriously "crushed." The police suspect Frank
(they're on to his scam), but he's the only one who can see the
true killer: no less than Death itself, dressed in Grim Reaper
robes.
What is this Death figure? Why do the victims have numbers carved
into their foreheads? What does the plot have to do with the
harsh old woman who won't let her daughter (E.T.'s Dee
Wallace Stone) out of the house? Will Frank find love with a
beautiful young doctor (Trini Alvarado), whose recently deceased
yuppie husband (Peter Dobson) hangs around as a resentful ghost?
Will I answer any of these questions? Nope.
Fox, whose comeback as a leading man deserves to begin here,
smoothly handles both the slapstick and the poignant moments
(Frank has a tragedy in his past). He works seamlessly with a
variety of spectral CGI effects, and he's generous enough to
let Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator) steal the movie. Playing
an obsessed FBI agent driven around the bend by joining too many
cults (to spy on them), Combs delivers his dialogue as if he'd
just swallowed a live spider. He's creepy even when he isn't
doing anything at all; he's a frightener, all right.
The real star of the movie, though, is Peter Jackson. This is
his fifth film, and his first for a major studio. Before he spruced
up his resume with the Oscar-nominated Heavenly Creatures,
Jackson was notorious for Bad Taste, Meet
the Feebles, and Dead Alive -- three of the most
disgusting (and most hilarious) movies ever made. Heavenly
Creatures, brilliant though it was, worried me a bit: Had
Jackson actually grown up? No, thank God. With The Frighteners,
Jackson is batting five for five. The question now is whether
America is ready for him.
POSTSCRIPT: America wasn't ready. Actually, this
movie and Multiplicity
were both casualties of the 1996 Summer Olympics -- people stayed
home glued to the tube and missed two of the summer's more entertaining
movies. Give 'em a shot on DVD, willya?
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