Black Gate

The Frighteners 15th Anniversary Blu-Ray

Read Part I: The Real-Life Inspiration, and Part 2: Humor & Horror Examples + A Recap.

When I sat down to write about The Frighteners, I found myself writing around the “problem/s” with the movie. At first I thought it didn’t have enough plot, but it has plot points galore, and while every character seemed to be a trope or stereo-type, there were lots of hints about the depths of these characters and their relationships. I deleted a fair bit of what I wrote, after I realized that I wasn’t finding the problem. So I watched it a third time. It was like scales fell from my eyes. I think I understand Peter Jackson’s formula for the film, and having clued into that, I liked it ever so much more.

The Frighteners is two films sharing the same celluloid, but paying little or no attention to the other. The scary ghost story is unaware of the broad comedy, and vice versa.

In this world, average humans and average ghosts share the same locations and space, but are generally unaware of each other. The living are busy with their stuff, and the ghosts are tightly focused on their own problems (like avoiding bully ghosts). There are a scarce few ghosts, and even fewer humans, who are aware or care about what’s going on with the denizens on the other side of the veil, even if they’re standing physical elbow to ghostly jowl on the street corner waiting for the light to change.

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The Frighteners (Universal Pictures, 1996)

Read Part I: The Real-Life Inspiration here.

I hadn’t seen The Frighteners since it was in the theaters in 1996, until I watched it again last week. Twice. I had drastically different reactions between the second and third viewings.

After my first 2022 re-view, I came away thinking the movie was mainly just paying homage through pastiche to a lot of things. While it had interesting vignettes with diverse tones and styles, it never fully gelled into its own thing. It’s as if it went to a Halloween costume shop, tried on and modeled a dozen different outfits, then later said, “What did you think of my costume?” It was more a fashion show than a full narrative arc.

It was equal parts horror and humor. Often, an equal ratio doesn’t work well. It comes off as a split personality, or two different films sharing a movie reel. This is especially true when the humor isn’t a coping mechanism for the protagonist or an emotional vent for the audience. The humor was there, but it never really served a purpose in the way humor normally does when mixed with horror. The two parts seemed at odds.

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Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate are not familiar household names, unless you’re a true-crime or serial-killer enthusiast, or, perhaps, a Nebraska history buff. While they’d received lurid national news coverage at the time of the killings (Dec. 1957-Jan 1958), I’d never heard of them when my then-fiancé, Barry (now husband), first played the Bruce Springsteen song “Nebraska” for me. Those sparse but chilling lyrics are spare enough that you wouldn’t necessarily realize it was about a real, serial, spree killer and his teenaged partner-girlfriend just by listening to the song.

The song was on a 1982 album of the same name. Though MTV debuted in the summer of 1981, the slow, melancholy song featuring a mournful harmonica throughout, was not viewed as a contender for a music video to run on the manically upbeat and cheerful MTV.

But I got to see a music video of it. One put together by my TV news producer husband and one of the anchors at KMTV in Omaha. It was broadcast to homes throughout the country that were tuned into Lloyd Dobyns and Linda Ellerbie’s show, NBC News Overnight.

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I love spooky, Halloween fun, type films, especially those with ghosts and haunted houses. I watch them all year long, but there’s something special about watching them in October. I’m not keen on gory, dead teenagers, blood-fest flicks. There’s no amount of money in the world that would entice me to watch the Saw franchise, no matter how well written, acted, and edited. I’m not putting them down; they’re just not for me. Which means that come October, I’m more likely to look to Disney than Netflix for viewing ideas.

I recently re-watched The Haunted Mansion. My only previous viewing was when it came out in theaters in 2003.

Promotional copy for the movie says,

Here’s the fright-filled comedy adventure loaded with hair-raising laughs and eye-popping special effects! Eddie Murphy stars as a real estate agent whose family comes face-to-face with 999 grim, grinning ghosts in the creepy old Gracey Manor!

I don’t know if there are actually 999 ghosts in the film, but there are a lot. They hit the whole range of emotions, including the silly barbershop quartet singing graveyard busts, the wise-cracking Jennifer Tilly who plays the psychic trapped inside her own magic ball, and the briefly-scary zombies in the family crypt, to name just a few.

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I just watched Bad Times at the El Royale and really liked it. It was clearly influenced by the best of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

The cast is an impressive one, including Jeff Bridges, Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth (giving a remarkable messianic performance worthy of Jim Morrison), and Nick Offerman (in a small role). Cynthia Erivo also does her own singing. Her voice, like her acting, is stunning, and she provides the soundtrack to much of the movie.

Dakota Johnson, Cailee Spaeny, and Mark O’Brien also turn in top-notch performances. All the actors are excellent, and I do mean that. I’ve never seen a movie that was more perfectly cast and perfectly acted.

It toys with who the protagonist or point of view character is, slipping in and out of each character deftly. Each is revealed to be not who we thought they were, and then when we think we know who they really are, that’s proven wrong, too. With dark and twisted turns it explores the question of what is good and what is evil. It posits that there’s more than a little of each in all of us.

The movie handles time slips really well, which allows us to see scenes from different perspectives, turning our understanding of the events upside down.

The pacing is unusual, which is probably why the movie wasn’t a bigger hit. In the beginning, particularly, you have to settle in and not try to rush it. It starts out at a low simmer, lulling you into a false belief that you know what’s coming next. That makes the reveals that are coming far more powerful.