Movies: The Frighteners

Peter Jackson's best known for directing the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but a lot of horror fans enjoyed "Braindead" (AKA "Dead Alive") more than anything Jackson's done with Frodo or Aragorn. It made sense, then, that Jackson's first truly mainstream film before hitting it big was "The Frighteners," starring Michael J. Fox.

The movie is two parts horror and one part comedy, a sort of inversion of the "Ghostbusters" formula. Frank Bannister (played by Fox) is a psychic detective who cons people; the twist here is that Bannister actually can communicate with the other side, and he uses his ghostly companions to help with his frauds. Everything seems fine until he becomes involved in a series of mysterious deaths. Michael J. Fox does a good job here in his last major film role, as a lonely widower with a dark outlook.

For some reason, "The Frighteners" was saddled with an R rating instead of the teen-friendly PG-13, which killed most of the movie's potential audience. Following the MPAA ruling, Jackson decided to amp up the gore in a few places (might as well, right?), which makes the film feel uneven. At times it's lighthearted, but the final sequence (featuring a seriously deranged character played by Dee Wallace-Stone) is pretty much straight action-horror. The movie also overstays its welcome (the Director's Cut is even longer), so much of the later third of the film feels gratuitous.

Rating: 7/10