While Peter Jackson’s later movies were much more successful, 1996’s underrated The Frighteners was a fun Michael J. Fox vehicle that deserved better than its box-office fate. A look back on Peter Jackson’s movies proves that the Lord of the Rings helmer has a unique career, even by Hollywood’s strange standards. Jackson started out making low-budget horror comedies like the classic splatter movie Bad Taste and 1989’s disturbingly gross puppet movie Meet the Feebles.
After the spectacularly gruesome gross-out zombie comedy Brainᴅᴇᴀᴅ under-performed at the box office, Jackson made a major tonal shift with his next outing. 1994’s Heavenly Creatures was a devastating real-life drama about a pair of troubled teenage girls and the murder they committed in 1983. Heavenly Creatures was an early showcase for the talents of Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, both of whom shine in the poignant, intense drama. However, Jackson was not done with wild tonal pivots after Heavenly Creatures earned him widespread acclaim.
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Next, Jackson worked on what began life as a spinoff of the best horror anthology show ever, Tales from the Crypt. Originally set to be directed by Back to the Future’s Robert Zemeckis, 1996’s The Frighteners is a morbid horror comedy with a killer premise. Michael J. Fox’s Frank is a former architect who gains the ability to see and speak to ghosts after his wife’s murder and uses this skill to scam homeowners. Frank convinces his ghost friends to haunt people so he can then charge them for expensive exorcisms.
The Frighteners was an expensive early misfire for Jackson, costing $26 million and earning only $29 million. Although The Frighteners received positive reviews upon release and has since been viewed as a cult classic, it is easy to see why the horror comedy failed to resonate at first. Considering Back to the Future’s Marty McFly was never that good a guy to begin with, it is perhaps unsurprising that Fox plays Frank as a pretty dubious, cynical antihero in The Frighteners. Combine this with a wonky, offbeat tone, and the movie was always going to struggle.
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However, viewers should seek out The Frighteners and give Jackson’s ambitious if imperfect horror comedy a watch. After Kiwi horror comedy hits like What We Do in the Shadows and Housebound, the unique sense of humor Jackson brings to the movie’s morbid subject matter will likely be more approachable for contemporary audiences. Meanwhile, it is fun to see the earliest showcase for Weta Digital’s effects, with the future industry leader contributing some comical ghosts and memorably weird demons in The Frighteners.
At times, The Frighteners feels like a Tales from the Crypt movie spinoff complete with cartoonish violence and outlandish characters.
With Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace Stone, Jake Busey, and R. Lee Ermey among the supporting cast, The Frighteners has no shortage of star power. At times, the movie feels like a Tales from the Crypt movie spinoff complete with cartoonish violence and outlandish characters, while Danny Elfman’s score ensures other scenes feel like they could be lifted from a forgotten Tim Burton project. The result is a movie that is never quite as funny or scary as the Michael J. Fox project could be, but one that proves Peter Jackson was destined for great things after the disappointing debut of The Frighteners.
