The Frighteners (1996) The Frighteners (1996)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (The Frighteners) | Backbeats (The Frighteners)

Quick Facts

• Director: Peter Jackson
• Screenplay: Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson
• Starring: Michael J. Fox (Frank Bannister), Trini Alvarado (Dr. Lucy Lynskey), Peter Dobson (Ray Lynskey), John Astin (the Judge), Jim Fyfe (Stuart), Chi McBride (Cyrus), Jake Busey (Johnny Charles Bartlett), Dee Wallace Stone (Patricia Bradley), Jeffrey Combs (Special Agent Milton Dammers), R. Lee Ermey (Sgt. Hiles)
• Producer: Jamie Selkirk, Peter Jackson
• Cinematography: Alun Bollinger, John Blick
• Editor: Jamie Selkirk
• Music: Danny Elfman
• Visual Effects: Weta Digital
• Runtime: 110 minutes (theatrical) / 123 minutes (director's cut)
• Budget: approximately $26 million
• US Box Office: approximately $16.8 million
• Release Date: July 19, 1996 (US)
• MPAA Rating: R
• Distributor: Universal Pictures

Overview

A widowed ex-architect-turned-fake-psychic-investigator runs a small-town extortion racket with three ghost confederates — staging hauntings he then "exorcises" for cash — until a real Reaper-like figure begins killing residents of Fairwater and writing numbers on their foreheads, and Frank Bannister discovers that the entity is Johnny Bartlett, the ghost of an executed mass shooter, working in partnership with the still-living Patricia Bradley to top his old kill score. Peter Jackson's first big-budget American film moves from broad ghost-comedy through paranoid procedural into a hospital-corridor climax that requires Frank to die voluntarily in order to chase Bartlett and Bradley across the threshold the rest of the film has been refusing to cross.