The Frighteners — Index

The wiki for Peter Jackson's The Frighteners (1996). Hub: The Frighteners (1996).

Plot

• Plot Summary (The Frighteners) — full narrative, cited to backbeats
• Plot Structure (The Frighteners) — the film mapped through the Two Approaches framework
• Backbeats (The Frighteners) — the film in 40 numbered beats

Cast

• Cast and Characters (The Frighteners) — full cast table and character notes
• Michael J. Fox (The Frighteners) — Frank Bannister
• Trini Alvarado — Dr. Lucy Lynskey
• Jake Busey — Johnny Charles Bartlett
• Dee Wallace — Patricia Ann Bradley
• Jeffrey Combs — Special Agent Milton Dammers
• John Astin — the Judge
• R. Lee Ermey — Sgt. Hiles

Production

• Production History (The Frighteners) — development through release
• Peter Jackson (The Frighteners) — director, co-writer
• Fran Walsh — co-writer
• Danny Elfman — composer
• Alun Bollinger — cinematographer
• Jamie Selkirk — editor and producer
• WETA Digital and Pre-LOTR VFX — the visual-effects pipeline built for this film
• The Robert Zemeckis Producer Era — how the film got to Universal

Analysis and Reception

• Themes and Analysis (The Frighteners) — navigator to essay pages
• Critical Reception and Legacy (The Frighteners) — reviews, retrospectives
• The Universal Marketing Disaster (The Frighteners) — box-office post-mortem
• Physical Media Releases (The Frighteners) — VHS through current 4K status

Essays

• Peter Jackson and the Splatstick Tradition — Bad Taste through Braindead, and how the register lands on this film
• The 1990s Ghost Comedy Cycle — Beetlejuice, Ghost, Casper, Sixth Sense, and where The Frighteners fits
• Number 13 and the Forehead Motif — the numerology and Debra as the resumption-victim
• The Unfinished House (The Frighteners) — Frank's stasis as standing structural symbol
• Michael J. Fox's Last Theatrical Lead — the Parkinson's context and the retrospective weight

Signature Scenes

• The Restaurant Scene (The Frighteners) — the Commitment rivet
• The Freezer Scene (The Frighteners) — the Midpoint, the voluntary crossing
• The Sanatorium Visions (The Frighteners) — the Eleven reveal that recontextualizes the first hour

Climax and Structure

• The Dragged Down Climax (The Frighteners) — the demonic worm-mouth taking Bartlett and Patricia at b37b