Day Eleven: The Frighteners

My bizarre, late and sleepless nights are finally taking a toll on me, so this is going to be a short post before so that I can get a couple hours of sleep. Which is really okay because I don't really have too much to say about The Frighteners.

I love me some Dead Alive, another earlier work of director Peter Jackson's, so I was excited to watch The Frighteners. I got even more excited/slightly nervous as the beginning credits rolled and Jake Busey's name popped up. He really is an under-appreciated actor who doesn't get the credit he deserves for having such large teeth, bleached hair, and a creepy stare. As expected, he plays the rarely-seen villain of this movie as well.

But you know what? You don't have to be afraid of Jake Busey, because Michael J. Fox is here to save the day! He can talk to ghosts but he still doesn't know how to drive without running over every fence and mailbox in the neighborhood.

I know it's a Peter Jackson movie, but the special effects kinda bummed me out. The awesome thing about Dead Alive and Bad Taste is that their special effects suck in a totally non-computer generated way. The puppetry is so fantastically B-quality that it takes on its own sort of badassness. The Frighteners, with a bigger budget and more computers, fails in that it looks like a cartoon. Remember Casper with Christina Ricci and Bill Pullman? (Yeah, I love that movie, too!) So, the ghosts in that movie were supposed too look like cartoons because, well, Casper was a cartoon.

I won't take back my criticism of The Frighteners, but I will admit that I still liked it. It's a fun movie and not very scary. Also, the R rating is totally unnecessary. I don't remember there being too much bad language, no sex scenes, and the violence we see is non-fatal (most of it, save the last scene, is slapstick). I would treat this one as a PG-13 horror comedy. Peter Jackson has definitely made mention of the MPAA's decision in some making-of docs about the movie- The Frighteners was intentionally a little lighthearted (two ghosts seem to serve no purpose other than comedic relief) and the violence and blood was kept to a minimum, yet the board refused to change its decision even after cuts were made to the movie. As a sort of "f you" to the ratings board, Peter Jackson made one of the final death scenes extra gory in post-production - a shot to the head instead of the chest - but it's CGI and definitely no worse than anything a teenager will see in a video game. I remember playing Duke Nukem at age 10 and it having way more realistic violence than this movie does. If you're into ghosts/serial killer horror movies, but can't find a good one to watch with the whole family, I definitely think this would be a fun movie if everyone is of the appropriate age.