The Frighteners

Comedy, Horror, Thriller

Michael J. Fox	Frank Bannister
Julianna McCarthy	Old Lady Bradley
Jim Fyfe	Stuart
Elizabeth Hawthorne
Trini Alvarado	Dr. Lucy Lynskey
Peter Dobson	Ray Lynskey
Jeffrey Combs	Milton Dammers
Dee Wallace-Stone	Patricia Ann Bradley
Jake Busey	Johnny Charles Bartlett
Chi McBride	Cyrus
Troy Evans	Sheriff Walt Perry

Director	Peter Jackson
Producer	Peter Jackson; Jamie Selkirk
Writer	Frances Walsh; Peter Jackson

One movie-lover's nightmare is another's raucous joyride, and this special effects-laden horror comedy is bound to split both camps right down the middle. Michael J Fox plays a psychic investigator who can actually see ghosts, and lives with a trio of spirits who scare people to promote Fox's ghost-busting business. In a town infamous for serial killings, a new series of deaths prompts Fox to induce his own out-of-body experience so he can battle death in a spirit-plagued netherworld where evil reigns supreme--or something like that. So much happens in this chaotic film that you might feel like you're watching several movies at once--a slasher pic, a supernatural thriller, and a black comedy all rolled into one non-stop showcase for grisly makeup and a dozen varieties of special effects. It's an odd but wildly inventive film from New Zealand director Peter Jackson, who earned critical acclaim for his previous film Heavenly Creatures and would later create the ingenious pseudo-documentary Forgotten Silver. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com