The characters played by Jeffrey Combs and Julianna McCarthy go down in film history as two of the most delightfully bizarre characters you'll ever see in a film, and it's truly a delightful surprise to see the kindly matriarch Elizabeth Foster Brooks from "The Young and the Restless" playing such a delightfully hideous mother. Wearing a wig that resembles the older Vlad the Impaler in "Bram Stoker's Dracula", McCarthy is manipulating daughter Dee Wallace over a family secret that has brought on demons to haunt her, and other mystical creatures, the demons that appear throughout the film are indeed the scariest. The actual ghosts that are in Michael J. Fox's mine are simply trying to recapture some of their life, whether enjoying the foods they loved, the spouse they adored, an apparently wronged judge, and in the case of a very militant marine officer, keep all the ghosts in line.

While this is more about the special effects and photography and Danny Elfman's magical score, the story is quite interesting with box able to see dead people because of a car accident that he was in that killed his wife. Now Fox communicates with the living whom the dead want to contact and this of course has him branded as a fraud. Everywhere he goes, he gets into trouble because of this magical power with security guards in the Museum of Natural History wanting to shoot him to shoot him on sight.

An absolutely delightful combination of horror, science fiction fantasy, romance and comedy, this is a surprising find for me as I had somehow missed even hearing about it. Fox gets one of his last great roles, feisty and strange and romantic and funny. With the Danny Elfman score, you'd think that this is a Tim Burton film as it does possess the magical impact of Burton at his best, but it was Peter Jackson behind the director's chair. Trini Alvarado is a great heroine, and the voices of the ghosts ( including John Astin as the judge) are letter perfect. "The Frighteners" is a positively perfect title because like any good horror film, you find yourself laughing at your reaction to the frights, and I also experienced practically every other emotion other than the feeling of anger having wasted my time. This absolutely was not a waste of my time.

Peter Jackson's quirky horror comedy acts as a showcase for a whole slew of impressive special effects - which, like in the similar MEN IN BLACK - work well due to the whole comic-book feel of the film. In a serious thriller or drama, they'd of course look fake and ludicrous, but in Jackson's brightly coloured world of ghosts and spirits, they're gobsmacking. While THE FRIGHTENERS is certainly a fun film to watch and a nice film to look at, sadly as is the case with most blockbuster's, it's hardly what you would call substantial, but that doesn't matter in this film's case.

This has the most basic of plots as well. Basically, it pretty much consists of one action scene after another with a little bit of history/background information thrown in to pad it out. This seems to have been done for necessity rather than any real reason; this is a purely superficial film. A manic energy keeps it watchable but the ending is a bit of a mess, with a need to tie up every loose end imaginable it quickly becomes a simple series of climaxes becoming ever more ludicrous.

Thankfully a team of interesting actors and actresses almost make it all worthwhile and give us something to listen to in between all of the ghoulish gags and special effects. Michael J Fox plays the film's lead, a fine enough actor to cope with all the happenings going on but a sorely shallow person to play. We never learn much about his investigator, save that he saw his wife die once and that a car accident caused him to have psychic visions. That's it. An unrecognisable Dee Wallace Stone plays a former mental patient caught up in the chaos while Trini Alvarado is the solid female lead.

Elsewhere, Jackson seems determined to fill his supporting roles with the most psychotic actors available. In particular we have Jeffrey Combs in a rare mainstream appearance (rather more substantial than his blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL) as a whacked-out FBI agent who has become more insane than the people he hunts. Combs looks incredibly odd in what I like to think is a dig at Fox Mulder's weirdness in THE X-FILES. While his acting is fine and good use is made of his expressions, his character's oddities quickly become grating and in the final third his role seems rather extraneous to the rest of the plot - his appearances eliciting sighs rather than the chuckles Jackson was hoping for.

Also on hand are Jake Busey (Gary's son, briefly showing in STARSHIP TROOPERS),as the film's resident psychotic murderer who is actually pretty good, R. Lee Ermey playing a riff on his role in FULL METAL JACKET, and old favourite John Astin as a decrepit ghost who has problems with his jaw. As mentioned earlier, the CGI effects are the best things in this film with all manner of glowing ghosts, flowing Grim Reapers flying across the sky and things reaching out of walls and floors to attack people. Impressive they most certainly are, and they make the film. A macabre sense of humour makes things more amusing than they rightfully should be, but again with Jackson this is all style and visual effects over anything else - as was the case with his frenetic yet hollow BRAINDEAD. Worth catching if your brain is switched off.

There is a rash of heart attack deaths in Fairwater. The town is still haunted by a psychiatric hospital orderly Johnny Bartlett who killed 12 people 32 years earlier. Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) is a psychic investigator. Ever since being in a car accident which killed his wife, he has developed psychic abilities. He has befriended some ghosts who haunt houses allowing him to perform exorcisms at a nice profit. Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado) is the new doctor in town. She treats Patricia Ann Bradley (Dee Wallace) but her mother won't let her leave the house. She was the underage girlfriend-conspirator of Johnny Bartlett. Lucy's husband is a boorish brute who got into a fight with Bannister. Bannister sets his ghost friends on the Lynskeys. During the exorcism, Bannister notices a ghostly number marked on Ray Lynskey's forehead. Soon Ray is dead from a heart attack.

There is an annoying factor about this movie. It's trying so hard to be weird and funny. The fact is Peter Jackson is not good at writing comedies. Michael J. Fox had never been one of those broad comedic actors anyways. He's a little jittery and playing a slightly annoying character. The ghosts are too aggressively ugly and really aggressively annoying. Ray is definitely annoying. There are a lot of annoying things going on in this movie. I can appreciate Peter Jackson's attempt here. The CGI is quite advanced. The wild ghostly ways are done with quite a specific vision. It's an interesting idea but not that funny and really unappealing.