The Frighteners

1996 horror-comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Frank Bannister uses his ability to communicate with ghosts to con people. One cloaked ghost is flying around making numbers on people's heads and killing them, however, and Frank has to find a way to stop him before he's put away for the crimes.

I was trying to describe this movie to somebody I work with. I couldn't really articulate what was good about it, and I couldn't really articulate what was bad about it. It's enormously entertaining though. It's that manic sort of entertainment, the kind that can only be created by a charged and creative and loopily unpredictable mind like Peter Jackson's. The Peter Jackson who directed this--as opposed to the one who created the boring King Kong remake or all those really long movies about little people walking around New Zealand--is the same Peter Jackson who directed Dead Alive, Bad Taste, and Meet the Feebles. Here, he gets a little star power in Michael J. Fox who is every bit as likable as he is in every single other thing he's done, even when he's not surfing on top of a van. It's a little hard to buy Fox as any kind of a bad guy. He's sort of an anti-hero here, a guy who is playfully conning but nevertheless conning a community out of money by taking advantage of a gift he received in an accident that took his wife's life. Right off the bat, Jackson's asking you to root for a rather unscrupulous guy. But that guy gets to run around on those little feet of his and make big eyes and say, "Whoa!" a lot, so you end up rooting for him. That, by the way, is what Michael J. Fox does best. He'll be remembered as the guy who could run around and say, "Whoa!" I wonder if Jackson would have made Fox a hobbit? I guess we'll never know. Also really fun to watch is an unhinged performance by Jeffrey Combs of Re-Animator fame. The character doesn't make a lick of sense, but he's hilariously portrayed and as eccentric as any character you're likely to see. I was really impressed with the special effects team behind this. The ghosts were cartoonishly goofy, almost like something you'd see sitting next to you at the end of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, but it was fun watching them splash through walls, manipulate the settings, and suffer disfigurements. The Reaper-esque bad ghoul is effectively sinister and visually cool whether he's rubberizing the carpet or wallpaper (not sure how he makes the setting elastic like that) or floating around as a Cape Monster. There are a lot of fun periphery characters including John Astin's ghostly The Judge and a character played by the son of last year's Torgo Award winner, Jake Busey, a guy who almost won his own Torgo in 2011. A lot of the movie really shouldn't work. Or maybe I should say that a lot more of it shouldn't work because there is quite a bit that seems a little too messy. Peter Jackson spills his soup quite a bit with this thing. Still, it entertains from beginning to end with a strange energy and creative story and was really hard not to like.

Barry recommended this just about two years ago.