October Horror 2013: 13 - The Frighteners

This is a short recap of movies watched during a weekend trip in which I wasn't able to write more full reactions in a timely fashion:

The Frighteners is another early Peter Jackson horror film, though with much better production and less "Weird" than Dead Alive/Braindead.  Our lead character, played by Michael J. Fox, is a former architect-turned psychic investigator in a small town.  Except he's a sham.  He can really see and communicate with ghosts, that's not the sham bit.  The sham is that ghosts aren't actually haunting his clients, well no...that's not true.  They are.  But the sham is that he's friends with the ghosts, they haunt houses because he asks them to so that he can charge people to "exorcise" their houses.  See, his wife died in a car accident years ago before he was able to finish building their dream home, and he's been grief stricken and financially devastated.  He's living in the half-finished house while saving the money he gets from his semi-cons (there are ghosts there, and he does make them leave...) to someday finish the house.

Really the plot isn't that important, and to be honest it's a bit silly.  However, the movie looks really good and is really funny.  It's got a lot of good slapstick and some nice "ghost" humor.  The pacing is lively, though it does get mired down attempting to work in a muder-mystery sort of thing.  The ghost look is particularly standout, though a lot of the later "creepy" sets wind up feeling more haunted house than horror movie.  The only real tough bit is that Michael J. Fox has been diagnosed with Parkinson's, but has not yet officially revealed it so some of his expressions and mannerisms look awkward as he's trying to hide it.

p.s. Jake Busey has huge teeth.