From the Vault – The Frighteners (1996)

I feel a little like The Simpsons, dealing with Hallowe’en stuff in November, but talking about scary movies on Hallowe’en weekend made a lot of sense at the time.

Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners is probably my second favourite Michael J. Fox film, or third if I can’t count Back the Future 1 and 2 as the same movie. It represents a real departure for Fox, both in the choice of movie and portrayal of a character. It is also a very special movie for Peter Jackson, as the film is litterally the stepping stone for him between Heavenly Creatures and The Lord of the Rings… in a way, if he didn’t make this film, he might never have made LOTR at all.

Fox plays Franks Bannister, a psychic investigator who can actually see ghosts (particularly the ghost of Chi McBride, probably one of my favourite performances in this movie) but squanders his gift by getting said ghosts to haunt houses so Frank can hustle a couple of bucks to finish his aborted dream home. When the people of Bannister’s small town (a really cool spot somewhere in New Zealand dressed up to pass as American) start dropping dead from some strange affliction, it appears that some kind of spectral presence is involved and Frank has to keep a step ahead of a deranged FBI agent, and ahead of his own feelings of inadequacy and guilt over his own wife’s death, to stop a malevolent spirit (played to perfection by Jake Busey) from carrying on a killing spree started over 30 years earlier. It’s a little convoluted, but that’s what makes it so great: the story is complex and keeps offering up new twists as things roll on. There’s a little time travel, a little divine intervention and there’s even R. Lee Ermey as a phantom drill sergeant that lays the smackdown on ghosts who get out of line.

The Frighteners is only kind of scary by my estimation and mostly relies on clever humour and inventive storytelling. While its effects are undoubtedly dated, I have no doubt they must have blown people away when it first came out. The director’s cut version, which is the one I have, has about 4 hours worth of features to help you really get the most out of your experience and understand how important this film is, for its own sake and for its contribution to filmmaking to follow.