The Frighteners (Film Review)

1996 Universal Pictures
Directed by: Peter Jackson; Written by: Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson
Starring: Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs, and Jake Busey
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 110 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 7/10

Frank Bannister has a habit of visiting funerals to pass out his business card. It seems Frank can communicate with the dead. Many think Frank is a conman, but the truth is both that Frank can see and interact with the dead AND Frank is a conman. Turns out, Frank sends three of his ghost buddies to haunt houses, after which Frank performs high-priced exorcisms for the terrified, unsuspecting homeowners. Frank also seems to have a bit of a haunted past--his wife died several years ago, and it's possible he has some culpability. You'd think this would frighten away Dr. Lucy Lynskey, who also recently lost her spouse, but every weird tidbit about Frank only seems to draw her closer. Unfortunately, there's a hitch in their burgeoning romance. It seems that the grim reaper himself might actually be responsible for not only dozens of townspeoples' deaths in the last few years, but the couple's spouses deaths, as well...and now the scythe-welder's got his eyes set on Lucy. Unfortunately, the only person who can see the grim reaper is Frank, whose close proximity to the last few mysterious deaths is starting raise some eyebrows. Can Frank clear his name and keep his new burgeoning love interest alive?
The Frighteners is an enjoyable mess. The tone, which leaps wildly between horror, black comedy, broad comedy, thriller, and slapstick comedy, is absurdly uneven. Cleary, Peter Jackson, in his major Hollywood film debut, was caught in the middle of making either a PG-13 film, or a splattery, R-Rated one. Nobody swears, there's no sex, but a couple of times, people get hacked to death with knives, leaving a bloody mess, and a lot of people die in general. Apparently, the MPAA was set on giving The Frighteners an R-rating no matter what cuts Jackson made (for apparently being too frightening). The tone not so much wavers, as bounces around like Bugs Bunny, giving the film both a fun sense of wackiness, as well as a discomforting lack of consistency.
Michael J. Fox gives a very enjoyable performance as Bannister, creating a sympathetic character out of a fairly morally grey one, while Trini Alvarado holds her own as Dr. Lynskey. Not everyone fares the same. Absolutely emblematic of the tonal shifts is Jeffrey Combs' performance as an unhinged FBI agent who has it out for Frank. The bizarre, off-the-wall performance is reminiscent of Jim Carrey's work from the same period, particularly The Cable Guy. Combs' character has been undercover taking down cults for decades and has completely lost his mind, resulting in some cringey moments, and yet he also produces some of the film's biggest laughs.
Watching The Frighteners now, the production values are also a mixed bag. Jackson's direction is brilliant, his choice of angles and camera movements strange, innovative, and invigorating. The set and character designs, many of which look straight out of the 1950's, are excellent, as well as the outdoor footage, which was all shot in coastal New Zealand. Then again, the CGI effects portraying some of the film's spectral forces, which were groundbreaking for the time, look a bit like low-budget video game work now. The script by Jackson and partner, Fran Walsh, tries to do a bit too much, and features some clunky one-liners, yet also feels fresh, smart and fun a lot of the time. The Frighteners is essentially a wildly mixed bag of a film that's thankfully got more M&M's than raisins, but as with trail mix, I'd still prefer to pick the raisins out.