THE FRIGHTENERS
[Spoilers]
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1996 Chuck Dowling
(1996) ** - C:Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Jeffrey Combs, Jake Busey, Dee Wallace Stone, R. Lee Ermey.
"The Frighteners" tries to be too many things all at once. It's part comedy, part horror, part thriller, and sadly, only partially entertaining.
The film stars Michael J. Fox, a con-man who enlists the aid of two spirits to haunt people's houses. Then he shows up to "exterminate" them and collects from the homeowners. Sounds good so far. The town that he lives in however, has had a recent history of people dying mysteriously. Mainly, their hearts have been crushed with no signs of outside force used. Sounds good too. Then, Fox is able to see one of the murders take place. It's committed by a grim-reaper type spirit that just reaches into people and rips the life out of them. Also very interesting. So what's the problem?
Well, the main problem with "The Frighteners" is that there's no depth into anything. The paragraph above gives as much information as the movie gives, which is hardly any. Fox is working with two spirits, a stereotypical black man and a wimpy white guy, to help him scam money. How does he know these spirits? How did he meet them? How did they decide to do this? What exactly do they do during these cons? No details available. At one point, the spirits are haunting a rich woman, making her small children fly around the room. When Fox shows up to exterminate them, she waves a newspaper in his face which states that he is a local con man who bothers people at funerals. So she throws him out. Now, did the newspaper state that he works with two spirits to con people? No, of course not. If it had, ever newspaper in the world would be hounding him. All it said was that he bothers people at funerals. So she just dismisses the fact that her children were FLYING AROUND THE ROOM. Yeah, ok. Anyway, this interesting plot line is dismissed 15 minutes into the film.
So now we're onto the mystery of what is killing all the people in town. Well, early on in the film we are treated to footage from a documentary about a vicious killing spree at a hospital in town. The murders were committed by an orderly there (Jake Busey, who looks and sounds so much like his father Gary that it's frightening) who wanted to kill more people than one of his mass murderer idols. We are then told that the orderly was executed for his crimes. Now, why are we watching this? Well, one of the Laws Of Movies is that you will hardly ever be given information in a film that doesn't have anything to do with the story (unless you're watching Michael Mann's Heat). So obviously it's this guy's spirit who's doing all the killing. But the film treats the discovery of this like some sort of revalation, like we're supposed to be so surprised by it. I can't stand watching a story where we the audience know everything that's happening but have to watch the characters on screen figure it out for themselves. That's why I can't stand TV's "Columbo".
The biggest problem I have with the film is that nothing about the spirits or the spirit world is given any detail. For example, the two spirit friends of Fox have to ride in his car to get from place to place, yet other spirits, like the demon, just fly around. These spirits walk without any problems, but pass through walls and fall in holes and other things. Then why does the ground support them? R. Lee Ermey (the drill sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket") has a great bit part here as a drill sergeant spirit who's in charge of the graveyard and keeps the other spirits in line. He can, at will, change outfits and suddenly produce big machine guns from thin air. So why can't the other spirits do this as well? The black spirit complains early on that he wants a new outfit. Well, Ermey can change his clothes with ease, so why can't the black guy? Later, Fox's two spirit buddies are fighting the demon, basically just by holding on to it. Yet, when Ermey fights with the demon, he magically produces heavy artillery to fight the beast. Again, why can't the other spirits do this? What are these levels of the spirit world where you can do different things? It's bad writing, that's what it is.
Late in the picture, Fox's character realizes (how he realizes this I have no idea) that the only way he can fight this demon is by fighting it in the spirit world, so he basically kills himself to go fight it. Then, 20 minutes later he's brought back to life and after resting for about three minutes, he proceeds at full strength, alive, to go and fight the demon again. So what was the point of killing himself in the first place??? Ten minutes after coming back from the dead he gets shot several times, falls 5 or 6 stories through many floorboards, dies again, but is still ok by the end of the final scene, which can't take place more that two days after the ordeal. The police, who were not witnesses to the film's outcome, seem completely ok with the explanation that Fox must give them, about demons and ghosts killing everyone. Also, the romance that develops between Fox and Alvarado is so phony that it's annoying. These people fall in love in a matter of minutes, which also happens to be a matter of minutes after Alvarado's husband dies. Truly ridiculous.
There are a few bright spots in the film. Jeffrey Combs plays a truly whacked-out FBI agent who's in charge of investigating "weird cases". Combs ("Re-Animator" and "From Beyond") always plays this type of character flawlessly, and he's very entertaining here. The special effects are also excellent, but just as with another Robert Zemeckis production Death Becomes Her, the special effects are all there is. "The Frighteners" is a major disappointment.
-- Chuck Dowling Please visit my movie reviews web site at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ You'll be glad you did.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews