Serial Killers Make The Worst Ghosts: ‘The Frighteners’ Reviewed
by Rachel Bellwoar
Regardless of what the Ghostbusters motto might suggest, there are plenty of reasons to be afraid of ghosts, or at least the ghosts featured in Peter Jackson‘s first big budget movie, The Frighteners (1996). Filmed between Heavenly Creatures and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (and, like those films, co-written by Jackson’s partner and frequent collaborator, Fran Walsh), Jackson has become known in the years since for his championing of computer effects with films like King Kong and The Hobbit trilogy. In The Frighteners, however, he didn’t have green screen or motion capture. He only had blue screen and an amazing team at Wētā digital effects in New Zealand to make his vision come to life.
As it is, The Frighteners sometimes feels like multiple films combined into one, and none of them completely work, making the film more of a showcase for early computer effects than a singular narrative force. I personally prefer the version of Frighteners that’s about Frank (Michael J. Fox), the scam artist who, with the help of his ghost friends (Jim Fyfe and Pushing Daisies‘ Chi McBride), keeps convincing his neighbors in Fairwater that their houses are haunted so they’ll pay him for exorcisms.
The version that Jackson seems more interested in (and in his director’s commentary he expresses his opinion that the second half of the film is stronger) is the one about Johnny, a serial killer played by Gary Busey‘s look-alike son Jake Busey. Johnny keeps claiming victims in Fairwater despite being dead. Somehow it’s up to Frank to stop him, even though he’s still grieving the death of his own wife, Debra (Angela Bloomfield), from a car accident.
That doesn’t stop the film from trying to force a new romance between Frank and recent widow Lucy (Trini Alvarado), though, and maybe if The Frighteners had spent more time on their courtship, they could’ve pulled off a slow-burn romance. As it is, their pairing feels more inevitable than genuine.
Basically, there’s a lot going on and, with editing not being Jackson’s strong suit (see the 4.5-hour documentary included with this release that Jackson keeps calling 4 hours, but it’s 4.5), the result feels a little all over the place. Jackson seems to have fallen in love with the FBI agent played by Re-Animator‘s Jeffrey Combs, for example, and just because he’s an off-putting character doesn’t mean it’s not a good performance, but he’s definitely a character who could’ve been cut entirely in order to tighten the film’s focus.
Instead, Jackson decided to cut some of the scenes of the Judge played by John Astin (Addams Family patriarch and father of Sean Astin, future star of The Lord of the Rings). All of those deleted scenes can now be found in the documentary (which was first made for the film’s LaserDisc release in 1998), but it really explains why the Judge doesn’t get a proper sendoff in the movie (his fate was supposed to be completely different), and one of the biggest disappointments of The Frighteners is how it ultimately treats Frank’s ghost friends as expendable instead of the film’s heart. A lot more pathos could’ve been wrung out of those relationships, but that clearly wasn’t Jackson’s priority (which doesn’t make him wrong, but it’s not the direction this critic would’ve chosen).
Arrow have put together a three-disc release for this movie. Disc one is the theatrical and fourteen-minute-longer director’s cut of the movie. Disc 2 is the same as disc one except the open matte presentation of the film (and Jackson’s audio commentary is on both discs). Disc three is all bonus features (and when you realize how long those featurettes are, it makes sense that they needed a separate disc). There’s the previously mentioned 4.5-hour documentary, which includes interviews with the cast and crew while their memories were still fresh and all the behind-the-scenes footage a fan could want on how certain effects were achieved, like the reaper (a character who would prove significant to Jackson’s later work on the Nazgûl for Lord of the Rings). There’s also a newer 1.5-hour documentary from 2022 with some of the creative team and cast members Dee Wallace and Busey, and a separate 41-minute interview with creature and miniature effects supervisor Richard Taylor, where he’s questioned by director Alexandre Poncet (The Frankenstein Complex). To Jackson’s credit, even with the commentary, he keeps coming up with new things to say, but what’s missing from Arrow’s release is any outsider critic perspectives (even the essay booklet is only archival articles), which feels like a big omission.
The Frighteners goes on sale October 27th on Blu-ray and 4K from Arrow Films.
