The Frighteners (1996)

Ending on a Peter Jackson triple feature was a pure spur of the moment thing. I'd always intended for The Frighteners to be this year's Halloween movie, but Bad Taste and Dead Alive were originally supposed to be published in chronological order like everything else. Then, a week before writing this, I was hit with some inspiration (which mostly came about because the window I originally had for publishing Dead Alive was quickly closing) and decided to publish them in this way, proving that, even though I plan everything well in advance, I'm still willing to be spontaneous. In any case, unlike the two previous movies, I can't recall when exactly I first heard of The Frighteners. Somewhere along the way of learning about Jackson and his pre-Lord of the Rings career, I read that he'd made a horror-comedy about ghosts starring Michael J. Fox, but that was all I knew for the longest time. Even the E! True Hollywood Story episode on Fox's life and career, which debuted in 2006, mentioned The Frighteners only in passing. I think the first time I saw anything from it was in the big making of documentary on Jackson's King Kong, where he talked about how Universal first approached him about making that movie because they liked what they were seeing from The Frighteners. From what I saw, it looked interesting, with some really cool CGI effects for the ghosts (I always remembered the moment when Fox sprays one ghost in the face with bug spray and it blasted off, revealing the inside of his skull), and I later learned it featured people like Dee Wallace, Jake Busey, and Jeffrey Combs, which piqued my interested even more. I finally saw it when I picked up the big special edition DVD at McKay's in 2017, which had the director's cut (which is the only version I've ever seen) and a massive amount of special features that were originally from the laserdisc release. And, as with all the other of Jackson's movies I've seen, I thought it was pretty good. It's far from perfect, as I think the storytelling and characters have some hiccups, the movie loses almost all of its comedic aspects by the halfway point, and, as usual with Jackson, he shoves an awful lot into one movie, to the point where it can get overwhelming, but it's filled with plenty of exciting setpieces, awesome visual effects work, and, much like Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice before it, makes for a unique take on ghosts and the afterlife.

Fairwater is a small, Midwestern town with a very dark and morbid history. In the past four years, nearly thirty people have suddenly died of what seems to a mysterious and sudden heart condition, but the town's long association with death stretches all the way back to 1964, when Johnny Bartlett, an orderly at the local sanatorium, went on a murderous rampage that killed twelve people. Bartlett was executed in the electric chair, while Patricia Ann Bradley, the fifteen-year old daughter of the administrator, was also implicated in the murders because of her romantic tie to Bartlett and sentenced to life in prison. But, five years ago, Patricia was released and now lives as a recluse in her family home, her mother never allowing her to leave the house. For one Fairwater resident, however, all this death provides him with business. Frank Bannister is a former architect turned psychic investigator who helps people deal with pesky ghosts haunting their homes but, the catch is he orchestrates the hauntings himself, as he's able to see and communicate with ghosts and plies them into drumming up work for him. However, business isn't going so well, especially when one of his most recent clients becomes the victim of the mysterious heart condition. While having dinner with Lucy Lynskey, the dead man's wife, in order to let her communicate with her departed husband, Frank witnesses a man die at the hands of a cloaked, Grim Reaper-like figure in the restroom. He gives chase, but his presence at the time of the murder and his driving away from the scene very frantically makes him a prime suspect, particularly in the eyes of special FBI agent Milton Dammers, an expert in paranormal psychology who's often been assigned to infiltrate cults. During the chase, the Reaper manages to destroy one of Frank's spirit friends and also claims the life of Magda Rees-Jones, a local newspaper editor. Now, with the help of Lucy and his two remaining ghost friends, Cyrus and Stuart, Frank must find a way to unmask this deadly specter before he claims more victims, and along the way discovers that the Reaper has a connection to the tragic event that first gave him his otherworldly ability.

According to Peter Jackson, he was actually visited by a ghost when he and Fran Walsh were living in a hundred-year old building in an apartment block. I can vividly remember him describing how the ghost was a woman whose face was locked into a scream, with crossed eyes and an open mouth, and also that he was relieved to find out it was a ghost rather than a crazy woman who'd wandered into the apartment (either one would scare the crap out of me). Whether or not that actually happened (according to Jackson, Walsh told him that she'd seen the very same apparition three years before), the conception of The Frighteners happened while he and Walsh were writing Heavenly Creatures. They wrote a treatment, sent it out to Hollywood, and it was picked up by Robert Zemeckis, who initially thought about turning it into a Tales from the Crypt spinoff movie, with he himself directing. But, when Jackson and Walsh wrote the first draft of the actual screenplay, Zemeckis changed his mind and decided it would come out much better if he allowed Jackson to direct it himself. In his introduction on the special edition DVD, Jackson describes The Frighteners as a very significant movie in his career, as it was his first big budget, studio movie with a well-known star as the lead, and it was also the first movie of his that relied very heavily on CGI. While it ultimately wasn't successful at the box-office, and, for another kick in the balls, Universal then pulled the plug on his intended remake of King Kong for the time being, it did work out in that the number of computers that Weta Digital had to purchase for the numerous effects shots made it possible for him to do The Lord of the Rings.

Michael J. Fox is one of those actors who's so inherently likable and charismatic that he could commit murder in front of you and yet, you'd never stop liking him. Case in point: his character here, Frank Bannister, is an opportunistic conman who is introduced as he's trying to take advantage of a grieving family, passing out his business cards which have a tagline that claims he can help you speak to a departed loved one at the funeral, and also has the ghosts he can see and is friendly with cause haunting activity so he can charge for getting rid of them. Actually, saying he's "friendly" with these ghosts is a bit of a lie. While he's good to old Judge, Cyrus and Stuart, the ones who often have to do the hauntings, are constantly berated and picked on, especially Stuart, who's actually intimidated by Frank. It's indicative of how detached from life and everyone around him Frank has been since the death of his wife several years before, further seen in how he continues to live in the unfinished house he was building for the the two of them and insists he's going to finish it, even though he barely makes enough money to keep the bank from selling it. The first time he's seen actually caring about anyone is when he sees how broken Dr. Lucy Lynskey is over the death of her husband, Ray, whom Frank is in contact with, and tries to bring her some solace by telling her what Ray is saying... up to a point, anyway. Frank also becomes concerned after having seen a number carved into Ray's forehead before his death, and when he sees a man with a similar number get attacked by a Grim Reaper-like ghost, he decides to chase him and find out what's going on. Ultimately, Frank loses Judge to the Reaper and also sees Magda Rees-Jones killed by him as well, and is arrested due to his connection with the deaths. Not wanting Lucy to get roped into it, he tells her he was conning her like everyone else at dinner to try to get rid of her, and then, when interrogated by Milton Dammers about both the murders and the death of his wife, Debra, the exact details of which he can't recall, he falls into a depression, wondering if he did kill her as Dammers suspects. This causes him to temporarily lose the ability to communicate with ghosts, as he doesn't believe anymore.

When Lucy comes to see him in the jail after finding proof that he's not a murderer, Frank is still in an apathetic state, unwilling to respond to her, and she calls him out on this, saying his appearing not to care about anybody or anything is just a ruse he puts on because he's scared. He says he doesn't want to hurt her, and while she says that's more crap, she shows him some compassion by wiping away his tears, restoring his faith and allowing him to see spirits again. But then, the Reaper begins

targeting Lucy, and after he destroys Cyrus and Stuart in the process, Frank, knowing he can't do anything to protect her while he's alive, decides to have an "out of body experience." He's willing to kill himself in order to do so, but Lucy comes up with a much less permanent method to allow his spirit to leave his body and chase down the Reaper. In doing so, he learns the ghost's identity, as well as that his wife was the first victim several years before, and he and Lucy go through hell in order to send this evil spirit back where he belongs, while

also dealing with the psychotic Dammers. In the end, Frank himself technically dies and makes it to heaven, where he's reunited with Debra, but is told it's not his time yet and is sent back to Earth, encouraged by his departed friends to finally start living, which he does. Ultimately, while Fox, as always, does a good job, Frank Bannister really could have been played by anyone and, for me, anyway, is not one of his signature roles, like Alex Keaton or Marty McFly, where you can't see anyone but him playing them (which is ironic, as he was the only actor considered for Frank from the get-go). Not that every role an actor plays has to be like that, but every time I watch The Frighteners, I always find myself thinking that anyone could fit here.

While we're talking about Fox, it's noteworthy that this was the last movie he physically starred in. He said it's because he was really homesick while off shooting the movie in New Zealand, but I have to wonder if there was another reason, namely his Parkinson's disease. When he made The Frighteners, it was four years after he was first diagnosed, and he was just three years away from going public with it, which makes me wonder if it was really starting to become unmanageable by this point. While he wasn't constantly shaking or rocking yet, there are moments here where his movements do seem a bit awkward. At first, I thought it was because his character was drunk but, despite the bad mindset Frank is in, he's never shown drinking, so I do think those moments are Fox dealing with and trying to hide his disease.

While Frank is an interesting character, Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado), despite becoming his love interest, is kind of meh and bland to me. She proves to be a genuinely good person, though, as she shows concern for Patricia Bradley when she has to visit and treat her in the usual doctor's stead and feels that her mother may be keeping her confined and abused. Also, even though her late husband, Ray, was rather obnoxious and she says their relationship wasn't the best, she is broken up about his sudden death. Although she and Ray become victims of Frank's fake haunting scheme, Lucy never doubts his ability to communicate with the dead, and also never believes he's a murderer, despite what the police and Milton Dammers say. Speaking of Dammers, Lucy proves to be something of a nightmare for him to handle, given how he has a major aversion to women screaming at him, to the point where he doesn't even want to be in the same room with her if he can help it. After Frank is arrested and charged with the recent deaths, she takes it upon herself to prove his innocence. She's eventually led back to the Bradley house, where she discovers Frank's utility knife, which is believed to have been used to carve a number into his wife's forehead after her death. Thinking that Lady Bradley is connected with what's happening, she tells Frank of this and manages to snap him out of the bit of depression he falls into thanks to Dammers' questioning. Because of her investigating, she becomes the target of the Reaper-like ghost and assists Frank in trying to catch him by using drugs in combination with extreme cold to bring him to the point of death so he can leave his body. However, she gets abducted Dammers, who is determined to have Frank die from hypothermia, although thanks to his spirit's intervention, Lucy is able to get back in time to save his life. When it's discovered that the murderous ghost is none other than Johnny Bartlett, Lucy, believing Patricia is in danger, goes to the house to save her, only to find the two of them are working together (it takes a long time for her to realize this when Patricia's behavior should have raised a lot of red flags). She and Frank then work together to stop the murderous duo and send them both to hell. At the end of the movie, Lucy reveals to Frank, whom she's now with, that, because of what she's been through, she can now see and communicate with ghosts as well.

Being a big fan of Re-Animator, Peter Jackson opted to give Jeffrey Combs a role, casting him as special agent Milton Dammers, a very twitchy and neurotic FBI operative who's sent to investigate the rash of recent deaths in Fairwater. He is convinced from the get-go that Frank murdered his wife and is responsible for all the deaths that have happened since, establishing that some of them were people he'd been in conflict with. When Frank tells him of the Grim Reaper figure he's seen killing people, Dammers believes that Frank's mentality is fractured and that, in his mind, this entity does the killing for him. Moreover, he believes Frank pulls off the murders through psychokinesis, and is so paranoid about it that, when he starts to shake from anxiety during the interrogation, he thinks he's actively trying to kill him and removes his suit-jacket to reveal he's wearing a lead breastplate. Among his other neuroses are a real problem with women yelling at him, to the point where, when Lucy yells at him in the interrogation room, he runs to the restroom and throws up, and not liking it when people violate his personal space, or his "territorial bubble," as he calls it. He also appears to have hemorrhoids, as he never sits down except when he drives, where he pulls out a rubber cushion akin to a life-preserver for him to sit on. But, as ridiculous as he can be, and as wonderfully over-the-top and theatrical as Combs' performance is, Dammers proves to be a dangerously disturbed individual, one who intends to see Frank die, one way or the other. He counts on Frank committing suicide when he pushes him into depression with his interrogation, and later, he abducts Lucy and leaves Frank to die in the freezer he uses to leave his body. Eventually, it's revealed that he was driven mad by the pain and suffering he experienced from the numerous times he had to infiltrate a cult, with his first such assignment having been the Manson Family, who he says made him their sex slave. He opens up his shirt to display numerous mutilations and skin carvings, saying he's done it all for his country, and also thinks he now has psychokinetic powers as a result. Even after Frank manages to return to his body, Dammers continues to be a thorn in his and Lucy's sides, at one point unleashing Johnny Bartlett's spirit from the urn he was contained in, as he still thinks Frank is deluded. He attempts to kill Frank, but ends up getting killed himself by Patricia Bradley and is seen as a ghost himself during the ending.

Frank meets Lucy's husband, Ray (Peter Dobson), before Lucy herself, as he accidentally plows into his picket fence and badly shreds up Ray's lawn, much to his anger. He's also not impressed with Frank giving him his business card and reading that he claims to be a psychic investigator, immediately calling him out as a fraud. Overall, Ray is a hothead and a egotistical health nut, and tends not to respect Lucy as much as he should. He's rather overbearing towards her, forbidding her from going back to the Bradley House and motioning for her to be quiet when she tries to protest. Suddenly, when their house erupts with paranormal activity, Ray is reluctant to call Frank, going as far as to say there's probably a logical explanation for phenomena like objects floating and flying in the air, as well as their bed shaking and floating up off the floor. Naturally, Lucy does call Frank, and Ray sits there and stews as he does his thing, getting especially irked over Frank having him defer his expensive charge in exchange for forgetting about what he did to his fence and yard. Before Frank leaves, he notices a number on Ray's forehead, but he thinks it's another scam and makes him leave. But then, the next day, Frank runs into Ray's disembodied spirit, who tells him he was on the rowing machine, when he felt like his heart was being squeezed and dropped dead. Ray does not take being a ghost very well, as he can't believe someone as young and fit as him would die so suddenly, finds he can't lean up against walls, and is distraught over having to stay like this for a year before getting a chance to cross. He attends his own funeral, blubbering over what a waste his dying is, and also crying over Lucy's sadness, showing that, despite his personality issues, he really did love her. Therefore, he has Frank speak to her for him, though when he sits in on the two of them having dinner for that very reason, Ray becomes frustrated with Frank telling Lucy how he blew all of her money on bad investments and her saying their relationship wasn't the greatest. He's still in denial about the fact that he's dead, saying he's going to continue looking out for her by moving back in and building her a dream home at some point. He continues hanging around Lucy when she goes to the Bradley House again to prove Frank isn't a murderer, where he faces and is destroyed by the Grim Reaper figure.

Dee Wallace's Patricia Bradley is the character whom the movie opens on, as you see her being chased about the house by the Reaper. Despite her history with Johnny Bartlett, dating back to when she was fifteen and was infatuated with him, for most of the movie, she seems like an innocent victim, not only of Bartlett and the evil spirit but also of her intimidating, domineering mother (Julianna McCarthy), who keeps her isolated in the house and, given a bruise Lucy finds on her neck,

appears to physically abuse her. When Lucy first goes to the Bradley House to tend to wounds that Patricia received while being attacked by the Reaper, Mrs. Bradley, making up a story about her dropping a knife, is insistent on her not leaving the house to go to the clinic and snarls at Patricia to go to her room. She also tries to get Lucy out as quickly as she can, telling her on the doorstep, "You don't know who my daughter is, do you? Patricia's not to be trusted... I can have her locked up any time I want to. They said she was an accessory after the fact. I know the truth: it was cold... blooded... murder." Later, while Lucy checks out Frank's home while he's in jail, she hears a message from Mrs. Bradley asking him to help drive away the "evil one," whom she says Patricia is communing with. When Lucy sneaks back into the Bradley House and meets up with Patricia, it does appear that her mother is truly abusive and cruel towards her, as Patricia says she forces her to keep her father's ashes in her bedroom as punishment for contributing to his suicide. She then cries about her mother calling her evil and, in Mrs. Bradley's room, Lucy finds numerous newspapers about the Bartlett murders, as well as the utility knife believed to have been used in the murder of Frank's wife. Near the end, when Bartlett's ghost is revealed to be the murdering spirit, Frank sends Lucy to get Patricia out of the house, believing her to be in danger. But, once there, it's slowly revealed that Patricia is, in fact, the evil, deranged woman her mother claimed she was, as she's actually in contact and still involved with Bartlett even while he's a ghost. Moreover, she not only took part in the sanatorium massacre decades but both of them are the ones who murdered Debra, and Patricia is more than willing to aid Bartlett in becoming the most prolific killer of all time. She also kills her mother offscreen, with Lucy later finding her brutalized body in her room.

Given the clues of the numbers on the victims' foreheads and his penchant for wanting to kill more people than any other murderer, it's not really a surprise that the Death-like entity going around killing people is the ghost of mass murderer Johnny Bartlett, but the reveal that he and Patricia are still involved even after his death and that she was part of his original rampage picks up the slack. While Bartlett is hardly a nuanced character, as there's no motive for why he began killing people other than wanting to be the one with the biggest body count, Jake Busey really gets to chew the scenery whenever he's onscreen, raving about he's public enemy number one and how, when he surpasses Ted Bundy's kill-count, he'll delight in rubbing it in his face. He's outraged over how, "That Russian cannibal creep is running around, sayin' he did fifty plus. That reflects badly on the both of us, Patty. This record should be held by an American." Speaking of "Patty," he and Patricia are really into each other, just as they were when they were alive (and she was only fifteen), making for a truly sick kind of love. Exactly how Bartlett is able to kill or even interact with living people is wildly inconsistent. When he's in his Grim Reaper form, he's invisible to them but is able to reach into their chests and squeeze their hearts until they die, but when he's out of that form and is a regular ghost like the others, it seems as though he can only do any damage if he acts through some physical object or material... that is, until near the end, when he's actually holding Lucy down to prevent her from interfering with Patricia strangling Frank. And while they're battling him in the Bradley House, Bartlett, after being freed from a painting he was inhabiting, appears to intentionally trap himself in his urn, which Frank uses to keep him contained until Dammers lets him out. I have no clue why he did that. In any case, as unhinged as Busey gets here, Bartlett spends the climax stuck in the urn while Patricia does most of the damage, chasing after Frank and Lucy with a shotgun and ultimately strangling Frank to the point where he does die. But, once he's a ghost, Frank manages to rip Patricia's spirit out of her body and goes to take her to the afterlife. Being the only person he's ever cared about, Bartlett pursues them and, while he gets Patricia back, the two of them end up getting taken to hell when they attempt to go back to Earth to continue their killing spree.

Among the other ghosts in the film, two of them who act as Frank's "business partners" are Cyrus (Chi McBride), a street gangster from the 70's, with very exaggerated duds from the period, gold chains around his neck, and a big Afro, and Stuart (Jim Fyfe), a demure nerd with 50's-era clothes. They're the ones Frank sends to temporarily haunt a house so he can come in and exorcise them, but while they don't have any qualms about doing it, they're not thrilled about the way he constantly puts them

down and criticizes them for doing bad jobs, as well as for making them ride in his car's trunk. Cyrus is the more forceful of the two, ready and willing to stand up to and call Frank out, while Stuart is far from confrontational and more of a doormat for Frank's verbal abuse. He's also so uptight that he gets stuck when he trying to go through the house's front door, with Frank commenting, "In or out, man," and is the one who gets most of his face blown off when Frank blasts him with bug spray while trying to get a fly, which he says they attract loads of. You think they're going to be significant supporting characters but, after the first half hour, they appear less and less. They get caught up in Frank's initial pursuit of the Grim Reaper, help him avoid getting arrested when he tries to save Magda Rees-Jones at the museum, visit him in jail to help get him out, only to find he's lost his faith and can't see them, and, when the Reaper attacks Lucy in the jail cell, they hold him back long enough for Frank to get her out, although they're destroyed in the process. When Frank makes it to heaven at the end, the two of them are there to meet up with him (I guess Cyrus wasn't that bad of a gangster if he made it to the pearly gates), Cyrus now having lost his Afro and getting the cigars he wanted as a ghost, while Stuart, according to him, has become popular with the ladies up there. Though Frank is willing to stay since Debra is there, they send him back, telling him it's not his time yet and encourage him to actually start living life.

John Astin appears as Judge, a gunslinger from the Old West who, even for a ghost, is old and badly decayed, with his lower jawbone just barely hanging on and sometimes falling off altogether, after which his ghostly hound-dog runs off with it. Frank calls Judge his go-to guy and tries to get him to whip Cyrus and Stuart into shape, but he breaks it to Frank that he's very far-gone, as he's falling apart and his ectoplasm is all dried up. He also acts as something of a mentor to Frank, telling him, "Death ain't no way to make a living," and calls him out on how he's got too much weighing on him ("Too many skeletons in the closet," as he puts it) to keep him from getting on with life. Much to his aggravation, Frank doesn't heed his advice or even listen to him, but Judge still proves invaluable, as he's really good with his pair of six-shooters, helping Frank battle the Grim Reaper, whom he calls the mythical "Soul Collector," and also stops him from killing Magda Rees-Jones at the museum when Frank is held at gunpoint. But then, he gets distracted by one of the mummies at the museum and actually does the nasty with her, saying, "They don't call me the Hangin' Judge for nothin'." After he's done, he gets all excited and fires his guns off excitedly, saying he's got his juices back, but falls victim to the Reaper. He was supposed to have more scenes afterward but they were removed in the editing process, so he then disappears from the movie completely, not even appearing in heaven with the others.

Out of all the ghosts, Judge has the most elaborate makeup design, with his withered, wrinkly, skull-like face, sunken in eyes, balding head with long, stringy hair around the edges, cracked and peeling flesh around his bottom jaw, and the loose, out of joint jawbone. The makeup design was courtesy of Rick Baker, who came up with it during his off-time while working on The Nutty Professor, but because of his commitments to that film, he couldn't actually be there to apply it to John Astin. Once the design was finished, he sent everything to New Zealand, where the application was done by another makeup artist, Brian Penikas.

Another recognizable actor is R. Lee Ermey, who plays Hiles, a ghostly master sergeant who's in charge of all the spirits in the local cemetery, keeping them in their graves. He's basically the ghost of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, only without the profanity. Never talking without shouting, he does not like Frank at all, as he hates his method of using ghosts to drum up business for himself, and when he brings Ray to the cemetery for his own funeral, Hiles gets in Frank's face, knocks him down, and tells him to stay out of his cemetery. He also says he'll be the one to protect the cemetery from any lowlifes with a major armed response. He pops back up when Frank has his out of body experience and proves to be a hindrance when he tries to save Lucy from Dammers, yanking Frank out of the police car while he's driving with Lucy in the back. When faces off with the Reaper, Hiles attempts to shoot him down but gets sliced up the middle for his trouble.

Among the living, Sheriff Perry (Troy Evans) is Frank's only real ally at first. Whether or not he believes in his ability to communicate with the dead is up in the air, as he asks him early on if he has any theories as to what could be causing these fatal heart issues but later tells Lucy he took advantage of her while she was vulnerable over her husband dying. One thing's for sure: he very reluctantly asks for Frank to be brought in when the evidence points to him possibly being a

murderer, as he doesn't believe he could be for a second. At the end of the movie, he speaks with Frank and reveals that a lot of Ouija boards were found in Patricia Bradley's room, explaining how she was able to contact the spirit of Johnny Bartlett. Peter Jackson makes his cameo as a punk guy with a lot of piercings whom Frank slams into while leaving the offices of the local paper (the day he shot his cameo also happened to be the day the media were invited to the set); Melanie Lynskey, who starred in Heavenly Creatures for Jackson and whom Trini Alvarado's character of Lucy Lynskey is named after, appears in one scene as a deputy; and Jackson's infant son, Billy, is a baby in a bouncer in a scene where Cyrus and Stuart attempt to haunt a house.

While I haven't seen Heavenly Creatures at this point, I would assume, given the healthy budget and fairly large scale, that The Frighteners was Peter Jackson's most technically sophisticated movie up to that point. It's definitely his glossiest, looking very slick and polished, as opposed to the rougher looks to his previous movies. It ultimately had two cinematographers, as the initial one, Alun Bollinger, who'd shot both Heavenly Creatures and Jackson's obscure mockumentary, Forgotten Silver, got caught up in a car accident six weeks into

shooting and had to be replaced with John Blick. Later, after Bollinger had sufficiently recovered, the two of them would alternate duties and, working together, they made the movie look very, very beautiful. It rains a lot in the story and when it does, the film has a very depressing blue color to it, while the day scenes do tend to be gray and overcast, with them applying an equally depressing look to that, although there are mostly clear, blue skies as well and they are quite lovely, as are the exterior nighttime scenes. They also shoot the

interiors of the Bradley House to come off as dark and creepy, especially at night, while the climax in the old sanatorium has a notable murky, sickly green look to it, which is counter-balanced by the bright, sunny look to Frank's vision of Johnny Bartlett's killing spree there in 1964. Speaking of which, there are ways in which Jackson differentiates between the main narrative and flashbacks, with the old news footage of the aftermath of the rampage that Lucy watches looking as though it were filmed on an old, 16mm

camera, while the flashbacks to the lead-up and death of Debra Bannister have a notable warm, orange and amber color palette to them. It's also notable how those flashbacks are shot in the loose camera style Jackson employed in his early movies, with lots of zoom-ins on faces and the camera often swirling around. But, he still does this in the main story, too, notably in the scenes with Dammers, who gets a lot of tight close-ups during his ranting, with his interrogation of Frank done through

big close-ups of his eyes and mouth, and the camera often jittering around and doing sudden zoom-ins on both him and Frank, as well as tilting along with his head. (While they were shooting those closeups of Jeffrey Combs' mouth, some saliva got on his lower lip and started to drip down towards his chin, and as Jackson watched this, he started bursting to laugh and broke after Combs wiped his chin. Hearing Jackson giggle like a little girl in the background of that blooper is really,

really funny. It got even better when Michael J. Fox couldn't hold it together and then, everyone started to laugh. It didn't get any easier when they did the close-ups of his eyes, as his eyes moved up in down as he spoke, to where they looked like little mouths. Seriously, track down some of these bloopers. They're a lot of fun to watch.)

Although it's set in America, Jackson, like always, shot the movie in New Zealand, not just in Wellington but also predominantly in Lyttelton, which stood in for much of the town of Fairwater, such as the landscape shots with the distinctive hillside homes and the bay in the background and the scene in the street where Frank first meets Ray as a ghost. The graveyard that features in the movie is also there, with the distinctive trees and concrete blocks that make up the entrance, while Frank's unfinished house was something they built in the

area (during the funeral scene, if you look in the background, you can make out the glow of the crew burning it, as they'd finished shooting it by that point). Excalibur, the medieval-themed restaurant where Frank and Lucy have dinner, is an actual restaurant with just such a theme in the nearby town of Christchurch (although the interiors were probably done on a soundstage). I have no clue where the building that was used for the Bradley House was shot, or the big, stately house Cyrus and Stuart try to haunt, but they were likely

either somewhere in that same area or near Wellington, which is where the interiors were shot, specifically at Camperdown Studios in Miramar. In any case, while it is New Zealand, I never questioned that this movie was taking place in the United States, as Lyttelton does have that same sort of feel to small-town America. (According to the movie's Filming Locations page on IMDB, some of it was shot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but, again, I have no clue what was done there.)

Set-wise, there are number of memorable ones, such as Frank's unfinished "dream house," which has nothing but the framework on one side (which he's seen using as firewood in one scene), tarps covering all the openings in the somewhat finished other side, little in the way of interior walls separating the rooms, virtually no doors except for the front one, no glass in the windows, all of the electric work and lights exposed, and a shower that's shaped and looks like an outhouse. When Frank has dinner with Lucy at Excalibur, you have

waitresses wearing dresses from the period, waiters dressed as knights, entertainers dressed as court jesters, and the place's architecture is meant to resemble an old castle from that era, with the pillars, chandeliers, tall windows topped with arches, a brick texture to the walls, red drapes, and shields and swords on the walls. While the jail itself is nothing special, the cell that Frank is kept in is memorable for how narrow it is, with there barely being any space between the cots on either

side of the room and a nasty-looking toilet up against the back wall, and when Frank decides to leave his body in order to catch the Reaper, Lucy places him in a high-tech freezer at the clinic she works at. The graveyard that features in a few scenes is also memorable, being a very classic setting with all the gravestones, as well as the tomb that Frank pursues Johnny Bartlett into after he's unmasked him. But the most significant locations are the Bradley House and the old sanatorium, which is also on the

property. The former is a classic, spooky Victorian house that's either dark and creepy or gloomy on the inside, with the expected well-furnished rooms, long hallways and corridors, and a big, oak staircase leading to the second floor. Patricia's room is a rather small one containing a portrait of her father on the wall, as an urn that you think contains his ashes, only to later learn they're actually those of Bartlett, while in Mrs. Bradley's room, there's a box in a drawer containing numerous newspaper clippings on the

murders and a closet where Lucy finds Frank's missing utility knife. The old sanatorium, however, is a long abandoned, rundown place that makes for a confusing maze of long corridors, no longer functioning rooms and elevators, rotten floorboards, and a chapel where they attempt to lay Bartlett's spirit to rest but ultimately fail to reach.

In this film, ghosts are depicted as transparent versions of how they looked before they died, often with either a blue glow or a grayness to them. They can pass through objects and living people, who can reach right through them, although, if they're really uptight, like Stuart, they can get stuck in things and vice versa. They secrete ectoplasm around their faces, which, according to Frank, can leave residue behind, which is why he makes Cyrus and Stuart ride in his car's trunk so they don't get it on his upholstery, and appear to have

sunken in eyes. According to Frank, these ghosts can only become "pure spirits" when they go to the other side; while they remain on Earth, they're a, "Rotting clot of bio-plasmic particles dripping ectoplasm everywhere," and it seems like the longer they stay on Earth, the more their form decays the way it would in reality, as evidenced by Judge. Ghosts seem to have a choice to either stay in their graves until they get the chance to go to the other side, which doesn't happen very often, or wander the land, although only special people like

Frank, whose perception was altered following the traumatic experience he went through with his wife, can see or hear them. They can also be summoned from the afterlife and brought to Earth by methods such as a Ouija board, which is how Patricia was able to conjure up Johnny Bartlett, and it appears that ghosts that are "killed" by another ghost end up going to the other side immediately. Like I said earlier, there are some things that are

not clear, such as how some ghosts can interact with, be seen by, or even attack people while others can't, as well as why only certain people become ghosts to begin with, as Debra Bannister seems to have gone straight to heaven after her death. Also, during the climax in the sanatorium, Frank has visions of what happened during Johnny Bartlett's massacre, though why he's having them are never explained.

The ghosts are the source of most of the movie's comedy, mainly due to their exaggerated personalities, with Cyrus being a big, tough guy, while Stuart, despite sharing Cyrus' frustrations about Frank, is a complete and total wimp who can't stand up for himself and allows Frank to walk all over him. When they return to the house with Frank after they drummed up paranormal activity at the Lynskey household, they complain about the raw deal they're getting from him, with Cyrus telling him, "I'm gonna find me some other black

ghosts and then, organize a march: the African-American Apparition Coalition, the AAAC. And lemme tell you somethin', Frank, there ain't nothin' worse than a bunch of pissed off brothers that's already dead!" Then, Stuart talks about getting rough with Frank as well, only to back off when Frank yells down at him from upstairs, which Cyrus chastises him for. He tells him, "You gotta just walk up to Frank, just look him in the eye, and say, 'Frank, GIMME WHAT I WANT OR I'M GONNA BUST YOUR ASS!'" Just to add to it,

Cyrus' head glows from the inside like a jack-o-lantern because he's standing where a light-bulb is hanging down. An especially bigger than life personality is that of Hiles, who's always yelling, gets right up in Frank's face, tells him he doesn't like him, and not only shoves him but is able to morph, creating a riot shield when Frank goes to punch him back and then develops boxing gloves to knock him to the ground. When talking about protecting the cemetery from lowlifes, he produces

a couple of machine guns and fires them randomly. He's also not at all afraid of the Reaper when he encounters him later on, telling him to sound off, "Like you got a pair!", and even fires on him, which ultimately proves futile, although he does provide Frank with a useful method of battling him in the process.

The ghost who's the funniest is Ray, who's just as hot-headed and egotistical as he was when he was alive. He cannot accept being dead at all, saying he shouldn't have died to begin with because of how young and fit he is, and blubbers like a baby while attending his own funeral, not realizing that the eulogy isn't exactly flattering. He's horribly clumsy and inept as a ghost, almost falling right through a wall when he tries to lean on it and also falls into his grave and comes face to face with his own corpse, before nearly getting buried. His best

moments come when he sits in on Frank and Lucy's dinner and finds that being invisible to everyone except Ray leads to a lot of problems. Lucy admits that she never liked red wine, which Ray says is what they always had; he sits there bored as Lucy gets Frank to tell her everything about himself, exclaiming, "Oh, finally, I'm in the conversation! Terrific!", when Frank switches the subject back to him; he calls Frank an asshole when he tells Lucy that Ray blew all her money on a bad investment; he and Frank get into an

argument about his moving back in with Lucy, which Frank ends by telling Lucy that Ray just left, that he wanted her to get on with her life, to which Ray yells, "I swear to God, Bannister, I am gonna kill you!"; and when Lucy says her marriage to Ray wasn't exactly good, he whines, "You bitch!", before getting jealous when Frank touches her hand. After that, Ray has some more memorable moments as he hangs around Lucy while she goes to Frank's house and then to the Bradley House, commenting on how his ectoplasm is a turnoff to her and what a dump Frank's place is, and continues to remain funny until the very end.

There are instances of cartoonish slapstick and physical comedy to be had with the ghosts, like when Stuart gets stuck in the front door and Cyrus stretches him to a ridiculous degree while pulling him out, Frank sprays him in the face and blows off his facial features, Judge goes on a shooting spree when his ghostly hound-dog steals his lower jawbone and maims Stuart, and the problems Judge has with his detachable jaw in general. Also, while never horribly graphic, there is some sexual humor here, like when Cyrus pokes his head up through the shower

drain while Frank is using it, asks him, "How's it hangin'?", Frank responds, "I don't know Cyrus. You tell me," and Cyrus answers, "Well, Frank, I tell ya... the women ain't missin' nothin'!" Also, when Cyrus keeps bugging him, Frank informs him, "Hey Cyrus, I gotta take a leak, and I'm not gettin' out of the shower," sending him back down the drain pretty quickly. Later, while Judge is talking with Frank, he tells him not to let it slip to Cyrus and Stuart that his ectoplasm has completely run out, as if it's akin to lacking virility. And then, there's the moment during the sequence at the museum where Judge gets distracted by a mummy he finds to be really good-looking and appears to have sex with it, commenting afterward, "I like it when they lie still like that."

As funny as it is, this is the one Peter Jackson horror-comedy that more or less stops being funny about an hour into it. While Dead Alive certainly has a disturbing, nightmarish vibe to it throughout, it also never relents in how funny it is in its sheer audacity and outrageous gore and dark humor; The Frighteners, on the other hand, despite the genuinely suspenseful opening, starts off funny with the premise of how Frank arranges for jobs exorcising ghosts and the antics of the ghosts themselves, but there's still the notion of this frightening, deadly

entity going around killing people and that Frank's wife died under mysterious circumstances, granting him his gift. Around the time Frank is arrested and interrogated by Dammers, the humor really starts to taper off. There are still hints of it, such as in how over-the-top and theatrical Dammers is (his death is especially sudden and funny), an occasional one-liner or throwaway line from Frank ("You are such an asshole!"), and even with how crazy Jake Busey gets as Johnny Bartlett, but it does start to feel more like a straight horror film about Frank having to deal with his own personal demons and stop the spirit of this mass murderer, who's also continuing his sick relationship with his still alive lover.

At the time the movie was made, CGI was not only just starting to take off but Weta Digital, which Peter Jackson co-founded with Richard Taylor and Jamie Selkirk, had only been established three years before, so they were rather in over their head with the amount of digital effects work necessary here. According to Jackson, they went from having just one computer to 35 in total, and even then, they had to outsource certain shots to other such companies in New Zealand. Ultimately, to make the deadline, Universal gave the filmmakers

another $6 million, as well as fifteen additional animators and workstations. As much as I prefer practical over digital, there's something about how Jackson and Weta Digital work together that make the CGI in his films come off as more appealing than most others and the same is definitely true of The Frighteners. For one, the effects of the ghosts, with their transparency, glowing, occasional morphing, and their passing through objects and vice versa, still look pretty good. Moreover, when you realize that scenes between the ghosts and

living characters had to be shot with the two elements done separately from each other and then blended together, it's all the more amazing how naturally their interactions and banter come off. While some effects, like the giant, monstrous worm creatures that drag Johnny Bartlett and Patricia to hell at the end haven't aged all that well, the Grim Reaper form Bartlett takes for much of the movie is done very effectively, with the way he quickly lunges and dashes through environments, stalks

around like a predator closing in for the kill, and just how unnatural his movements are altogether. The same also goes for when he's first revealed to be Bartlett in the cemetery, where Frank blasts him into black goop and his face switches from a demonic visage to that of Bartlett, as he oozes down the front of a gravestone and then goes down into a tomb, trying to reform. However, the shots of him moving through walls, counters, paintings, and other trappings are more mixed, sometimes looking good and other times seeming horribly dated. And the movie's version of heaven, from what you see of it (Cyrus and Stuart allude to there being a lot more), looks really meh, with just a lot of bright light amid a cloudy background, although the bit you see of hell, with the giant worm taking Bartlett and Patricia, is kind of cool, even if the CGI isn't that great.

Not all of the effects work is digital, though. Besides Rick Baker's makeup design for Judge, Weta Workshop, the practical part of the company, did some miniature houses and buildings to help make Fairwater come off as more American, some fake corpses for the scenes in the graveyard, a mummy puppet for when Cyrus and Stuart move it to distract the cops who are shooting at Frank in the museum, and even some blood for when Lucy discovers that Patricia murdered her mother and flashbacks to the massacre. Speaking of which, Jackson said that he tried to

hold back enough so the movie would get a PG-13-rating but the MPAA gave it an R regardless, saying its intensity merited one (according to Jackson, that intensity included a door getting shot too many times for their liking). Because of that, Jackson went back and reshot Dammers' death scene, having his head get blasted rather than shot in the chest like he was originally.

The movie's opening has Patricia Bradley running through her house in a panic on a dark, stormy night. She runs downstairs and into a study, hiding on one side of a sofa and pleading, "Please, don't hurt me!" At the same time, her mother awakens in her room and yells, "It's wrong! She's too young! The sins of the flesh will ruin her." A human form emerges from the wall behind Patricia, grabs her, and drags her up, but she manages to get loose. The form pursues her, lunging out of the wall at her,

knocking over a bookcase, and then going through the ceiling. It chases her into the kitchen, where it continues making its way through the walls, smashing open cabinets, knocking down a set of shelves holding plates, pushing aside the refrigerator, moving through the counter, knocking plates and cutlery off and cutting Patricia's hand in the process, and chasing her back upstairs, now moving through the floor and the stairs. When she reaches the landing, it rises up, grabs her wrists from behind, and drags her back, when Mrs.

Bradley emerges from her room, wielding a shotgun. Pumping it, she declares, "The evil will be punished," and blasts the form's head that's sticking up through the carpet, releasing Patricia. The entity itself then comes up through the carpet and flies right at the screen.

The opening credits play over a funeral procession and service for Chuck Hughes, the third person to die in Fairwater that week, and at the same time, the Gazette editor, Magda Rees-Jones, looks over the headline and the article. She doesn't care for the talk of Death and the Grim Reaper invading the town, telling her reporter to get rid of that and focus more on the effect Hughes' death has had on the family. Frank Bannister is introduced when he walks in on the funeral and starts passing out his

business cards declaring him to be a "psychic investigator." Unbeknownst to him, a reporter and photographer from the Gazette are there and they take pictures of him before one of the family members runs him off. Frank throws a bunch of his cards into the air before walking back down to where he parked his car and gets in. He drives back down the winding road leading up to the cemetery, cutting across the grass at several points to miss the curves. When he gets back to town, more of his

business cards slip off the passenger seat and he tries to grab them. This causes him to drive in front of a logging truck in the other lane and he quickly swerves to miss it. He smashes through a white picket fence and slams into another section of it, stopping him. As he tries to collect himself, Ray Lynskey runs outside, freaking out over what Frank just did, including the skid-marks he left in the lawn. Frank takes the opportunity to give Ray one of his cards, saying he'll pay for the damages, but Ray tells him he intends on suing him. When Ray

rips the card in half, decries his profession, and calls him a moron, Frank decides to get back at him by deliberately driving in reverse and crushing one of his lawn gnomes, horrifying him even more. Ray runs after Frank as he heads down the road, yelling, "I got your license plate number, you bastard!"

After Lucy Lynskey is introduced when she goes to the Bradley House, sees to Patricia's cut hand by bandaging it up, and also sees evidence that her mother may be abusing her, the film cuts to old newsreel footage of the aftermath of Johnny Bartlett's 1964 killing spree at Fairwater Sanatorium. Footage of him being dragged into court is shown, with Bartlett declaring, "Got me a score of twelve, sir! That's one more than Starkweather... Guess that makes me public enemy

number one!" As young Patricia is seen in the footage, and the narrator mentions her being implicated in the murders due to her infatuation with Bartlett, it's revealed that Lucy is watching this on video. After Bartlett's execution and the subsequent release of Patricia is mentioned, Ray, who's on the rowing machine while Lucy watches, turns the TV off and tells her not to go back to the Bradley House. Ray then attempts to get some intimate time with her, telling her he's made

reservations at a restaurant for their upcoming anniversary (which she forgot), when he sees an intact business card from Frank among the covers. Confused, as he knows he tore up the one he gave him, both of them are startled when the lights start blinking on and off, the closet door opens and closes crazily, and a cover flies up into Ray's face and causes him to fall off the bed. When he removes it, he sees the bed levitate up into the air, with Lucy still on it, as well as a statue of Elvis floating through. After hesitating for a few seconds

out of fear, Ray gets Lucy off the bed when she yells at him to help her, and when they take cover, the bed floats back down to the ground. But then, a Raggedy Ann doll grabs and tugs on Lucy's pajamas, prompting Ray to beat it with a pillow. That's followed by an uncooked chicken marching down the hallway, as a floating table lamp casts its shadow on the wall. With that, Lucy calls Frank's number, much to Ray's chagrin, as he says there must be a rational explanation for what's going on, all while he stands in the kitchen, with plates and cans

floating around him and the refrigerator door opening and closing. Frustrated, Lucy yells that they have a poltergeist, to which Ray says, "Well, it's nothing that the police can't handle." That's when a big pot whacks him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.

With that, Lucy calls Frank, who rushes over, smashing through more of the picket fence and driving over more lawn gnomes. Heading inside, he meets them in the ransacked kitchen and comments, "Persistent residue of the departed. Always a problem this time of year." Introducing himself to Lucy, he's surprised to learn that the paranormal activity has ceased, and he's also confused when he finds the table didn't spin counter-clockwise and the toilet seat didn't bang up

and down. But, when she confirms that the bed levitated, he calls it, "Spontaneous recurrent psychokinesis," and scans the kitchen with some sort of viewer, calling it the worst possible case of the phenomenon he's ever seen. He then informs them that the job he's about to undertake isn't going to be cheap, telling Ray it's going to cost them $450, before adding, "Although, we could forget about the fence. Call the whole thing even." Irked, and with a washcloth around his head from where

he got whacked, Ray, under Lucy's silent urging, reluctantly agrees. Saying he's going to need $100 for materials, Frank pulls out a device that looks like an old-fashioned toaster, plugs it in, and after he smacks it, it does something, with a fan whirring inside it. Lucy gasps when Frank pulls out a gun, but it turns out to be a water-gun filled with holy water. He sprays it here and there around the kitchen, including inside the microwave and the fridge, while Ray grumbles, "This is bullshit. This is total bullshit." A little blue pouch pops up atop

the "toaster" and Frank takes it, saying it contains, "Six ectoplasmic emanations," and asks Lucy if she'd like to keep them as a souvenir. When she turns down the offer, Frank puts the pouch down the sink and pours water on top of it, assuring Lucy the spirits can't feel a thing. Ray, having had enough, tells Frank he can go, when Frank sees that the number 37 is etched into his forehead. When he asks about it, Ray believes it's just a ploy to scare him into paying for something else and he packs Frank's stuff and shoves them into his arms.

He orders him out of his house, following him to the door and spraying him with holy water as he goes. Before he leaves, Lucy gets his water-gun back, then admonishes Ray for always driving people away. The two of them walk back to the kitchen, when a humanoid form emerges through the wall.

Frank arrives back at his house and, after he gets out of the car, Stuart does the same, stumbling out and saying he's going to throw up, which he does after Frank prompts him to with some gagging (it comes out of his ears, though). Cyrus emerges from the trunk as well, grumbling about how much he hates it, and the two of them follow Frank back into the house, Cyrus saying they're not riding in the trunk anymore. Frank, on the other hand, criticizes them for not doing anything when he got

to the Lynskey house, as well as for not doing much of the phenomena he told them to, and then asks, "Who was the idiot who put the number on the guy's forehead? It wasn't funny." Both of the ghosts are confused by this and discuss their complaints with Frank, with Cyrus having to pull Stuart out of the door, which he's stuck in, and then advising him to be more forceful when dealing with Frank. The next morning, after the moment where Cyrus sticks his head out of Frank's shower-drain, he and Stuart

talk with him about their complaints; Frank, in turn, complains about how they draw flies and blasts Stuart in the face with spray when the one fly, somehow, lands on him. While a ghostly hound is seen chewing on a jawbone, Cyrus demands some cigars, asking Frank to at least blow the smoke in his face. That's when Judge makes his appearance by coming and shooting randomly, actually hitting Stuart's right cheek. Frank tries to make him put the guns away, when he sees that the dog has his missing lower jawbone in his mouth.

He grabs the tail but gets dragged along the floor and slammed against the wall, which the dog goes through. Regardless, he yanks him back through, while Stuart and Cyrus complain about what just happened, with Cyrus commenting, "You know, if I wanted to get shot at every day, I'd move my black ass to Los Angeles!" Frank shoves Judge's missing jaw back in and, that night, the two of them talk about how Judge's time is long past, with Judge also telling him he's not really living and he's never going to finish the house the way he says he is.

Frank walks out of the room, when he's horrified by a figure akin to the Grim Reaper stomping down the stairs at him, wielding a big scythe. But, when it reaches the bottom of the stairs, it turns out to be Cyrus and Stuart trying out a new haunting gimmick. Frank is not amused, telling them, "Don't you ever do that again!", and storms out. Stuart tells Cyrus, "Maybe we should try a white sheet next time," but Cyrus says, "Ain't gonna be no white sheets, bro."

The next morning, Frank gets a letter from the bank saying that he either pays up $15,000 or they're selling his house. Speaking with the ghosts, he tells them to stop fooling around and to get "seriously scary." They then target a large, wealthy home for the big bucks they know Frank will get; Cyrus and Stuart are shown standing outside the gate, talking like they're about to rob the place. Inside, the lady of the house, Mrs. Waterhouse, says good morning to her babies as they toddle

around the living room, while Cyrus and Stuart speak with one baby who's in a bouncer. Cyrus tells him they're going to scare the crap out of his parents and asks if he's going to help them with it. The baby responds by bouncing and giggling happily, and they feel that means he gets what they're going for. With that, the maid, Sylvia, gets the surprise of her life when the baby levitates in the air, followed by the other two. Panicking, she yells for Mrs. Waterhouse, while Cyrus recoils as

one of the kids he's holding apparently let something loose. Mrs. Waterhouse comes running in and screams at the sight of her kids floating crazily around the room, before they come right at her and knock her down to the floor. One of the babies just happens to be holding one of Frank's business cards, and he immediately gets a call from her. He tells Judge he needs him to ride shotgun and the two of them head down to the main road, only to be held up by a funeral procession. While Judge tries to make him realize the trouble

Fairwater is in, Frank's only concern is getting to the Waterhouse home in time to make a dollar. Losing his patience, he drives right in the middle of the procession and then drives on the wrong side of the road, swerving to avoid oncoming cars, before getting back in with the procession and driving on the curb, much to Judge's horror. Doing this, he manages to get ahead of the procession and reaches the Waterhouse residence. He gets his gear and jumps out, advising Judge to stay there and rest his weary old bones. Once inside, he gives Mrs.

Waterhouse the same spiel he did the Lynskeys, even looking through the same viewer, ignoring Cyrus and Stuart trying to warn him it's no use doing this. He learns the hard way when Mrs. Waterhouse holds up a copy of the Fairwater Gazette with a headline reading, LOCAL CONMAN HAUNTS CEMETERY, as well as a picture of him handing out his cards at Chuck Hughes' funeral. Mrs. Waterhouse apologizes for calling him and tells him to leave.

Frank goes to the Gazette's offices and complains to Magda Rees-Jones about it but she tells him she feels the public needs to be warned about him and throws him out of her office. As he leaves, he comments, "I'm just trying to make a living," and Magda says, "Living? Not a word you'd know a lot about, is it, Mr. Bannister?" While leaving the office, Frank slams into a man with a lot of piercings on his face and is shaken when he sees an image of the Grim Reaper on his T-shirt, before

going on. Walking through the street, he's hit by a hearse and bounces across its hood, seeing that it's part of yet another funeral procession. At first dismissive, he stops when he sees Lucy Lynskey riding in one of the cars in the procession, and he walks on, only to see Ray's spirit running right at him. He passes through people and slams into Frank, knocking him to the ground. Two passersby help him up and Ray follows him into an alleyway, where he panics about being dead and how his

body is about to be buried, saying it can't happen to him. Ray describes how he felt something tightening around his heart like a vice, and after he cries a bit over what's happened to him, he asks Ray to drive him to the cemetery so he doesn't miss his own funeral. They head up there and when they park, Frank warns Ray that a cemetery isn't a safe place to be, but Ray is more eager to hear what they're saying about him at the graveside service. He tries to open the door, becoming confused when his hand passes through the handle, and Frank then

shoves him out through the door. They walk through the cemetery, with Ray freaking out when he sees various ghosts watching him from their graves. Frank assures him they won't hurt him, when Hiles shows up. Frank sends Ray on ahead and has his confrontation with Hiles, which ends with him walking away from the ghostly sergeant, who tells him, "My tour of duty runs another 85 years! There's a piece of dirt up here with your name on it, Bannister! I'm waiting for you, you little maggot!"

Frank joins the service, as someone gives a memory of Ray, saying, "There were times when people have accused Ray of being... less than generous. But I am sure, deep down, the man possessed a heart of gold and a generous spirit." Standing among the mourners, Ray sobs, commenting, "It's true. He wouldn't lie. Not at a time like this." He watches as his coffin is lowered down into the grave, commenting, "Oh, Jesus, what a waste. It's a goddamn tragedy!" Lucy tosses a

tulip onto the coffin, saying her final goodbye, as Ray tries to embrace her, only to fall into the grave and through the coffin. When it comes down on top of him, he's faced with his own corpse and gasps frantically before standing up. He yells for Frank to help him out of the grave, while Frank tries to act natural amid the departing mourners, motioning for Ray to shut up. Sheriff Perry approaches Frank and talks with him about how he was the last one other than Lucy to see Ray alive, while Ray himself is unable

to move as they start filling in his grave. He also tells him about how the deaths are akin to heart attacks but the autopsies have revealed that wasn't the case. Frank then asks if he can pay his last respects before the grave is filled in and Perry walks away, only to turn back and see Frank appearing to mime pulling someone out of the grave and walk off, talking with them. On the way out, Frank runs into Lucy, who asks if he has a message from Ray. Ray really gets excited and literally yells in Frank's ear to get him to tell her

that he's there. Instead, Frank tells Lucy, "Ray says he loves you very much." The film transitions to Excalibur, the medieval-themed restaurant, where Lucy meets up with Frank, while Ray sits at the table as well. He passes on the messages from Ray that she looks great and that the bouquet of flowers waiting for her on the table is from him. But, as the evening goes on, Ray gets more and more frustrated with the conversation, leading to him storming out when he gets jealous over Frank touching Lucy's hand. He warns him he better watch his back and blows an invisible kiss at Lucy before going through a window on the opposite side of the room.

Frank goes to the restroom to wipe off some wine Ray spilled on his pants during his tantrum, when a man walks in to use the urinal. As he walks by him, Frank sees he has a number on his forehead like Ray did, and then, in the mirror, sees something move through the walls and duck down into the stalls. Frank gets down on all fours, looking under the stall's door, then crawls over to the door, gets up against the wall next to it, and opens it, thoroughly weirding out the man using

the urinal. He quickly goes to wash his hands, as Frank throws open the door to another stall, finding nothing in there either. Thinking he just imagined it, Frank sits down on the toilet, when a hooded, Grim Reaper-like figure emerges from the glass in front of the man. He reaches into the man's chest, causing him to groan and slowly lower to the floor, with Frank watching from the stall. Once the man's dead, the entity goes back through the mirror. Frank walks out of the stall and sees the man's

spirit leave his body and cross over to the other side, where his mother is waiting for him. Tripping backwards over the corpse, Frank runs out of the restaurant and, after looking around, sees the Reaper on the roof. He jumps off and disappears into the darkness, with Frank giving chase. Later, after the body is found, Sheriff Perry learns that Frank was seen leaving the restroom right before it was discovered, while Lucy is brought in. One of his deputies gets off the phone and tells Perry that Frank was seen leaving the restaurant parking lot at

high speed. With that, Perry reluctantly orders his men to bring him in. Meanwhile, Frank, along with his ghost friends, is chasing after the Reaper, struggling to keep up with him on the winding roads. The Reaper then stops in front of him and he drives right through him. He goes off the road, down a hillside, and onto another road, barely missing a car, before coming to a stop at the edge of a drop. Looking out the windshield, he sees the Reaper atop a roof before he disappears into the night.

As Perry talks with Lucy about why she met with Frank at the restaurant, she notices a twitchy man appear outside the window. Perry goes out, greets him, and leads him into the room, where he introduces him as FBI agent Milton Dammers. Dammers, who seems reluctant to come into the room because of Lucy, asks what was the precise time when Frank left the restroom, and then if he used a lot of salt in his meal. Tired and frustrated, Lucy starts yelling about how she can't remember

something like that and Dammers suddenly becomes very agitated and disoriented, running to the restroom and loudly throwing up. Perry goes to check on him and he explains he has a problem with women yelling. The two of them return to the room, although Dammers is still reluctant to come in, and he insists to Lucy that she doesn't know who Frank really is. He proceeds to tell her about what happened on July 3rd, 1990, when, during the construction of the home Frank was to share with

his wife, Debra, the contractor reported seeing the two of them arguing over Frank having a basketball court made for himself rather than the garden he'd promised her. They drove away some time later, and Dammers mentions a toolbox Frank kept in the car, one with a utility knife that had his initials on it, adding that he purchased seven new blades that morning. After mumbling to himself for a few seconds, which Perry complains about, Dammers goes on, talking about how Frank and Debra drove up into the hills, the flashback

showing it was on Holloway Road, and the argument continued until Debra demanded he stop and let her out. At that moment, the car left the road, going over a curve and crashing down into the woods. Dammers tells Lucy that Debra's body was found fifteen yards from the car, Frank was later found wandering around with no memory of what happened after the crash, the utility knife was missing and still has never been found, and the number 13 was carved into Debra's forehead. Elsewhere, Judge tells Cyrus and Stuart that the being they were chasing was the "Soul Collector," when they see the portal to the afterlife appear above the nearby museum. Frank quickly drives over there.

Reaching the museum, with the tunnel coming up through the roof, Frank runs inside and sees that the base of it is amongst a group of people gathered around in one spot. Rushing towards them, he sees someone trying to resuscitate a man lying on the floor, who turns out to be Steve, the reporter from the Fairwater Gazette. Frank then sees Steve's spirit standing over the attempted revival, watching it, when he turns and looks at Frank, revealing a number carved into his head before he goes to the

other side. The man gives up trying to resuscitate him, when Magda Rees-Jones is revealed to be there, tearfully telling Frank, "There's no money for you here, Mr. Bannister." Looking at her, Frank sees a number on her forehead and warns her that she's next. Magda takes this as a threat and panics when he approaches her, yelling that he's threatening her life. The two deputies looking for Frank enter the museum and hold him at gunpoint, when the Reaper show up, stalks amongst the

guests, and finds his way over to Magda. Frank tries to help but the deputies tell him not to move. Just as the Reaper is about to kill Magda, he's fired upon by Judge, who shows up wielding his six-shooters. He walks in, firing at him repeatedly, and finally forcing him to retreat into the floor. Frank tries to get his attention but the deputies still won't let him move, and Judge is then distracted by a female mummy, commenting, "Mighty fine woman. Good teeth!" He jumps into the

sarcophagus, causing it to fall to the floor, distracting the deputies. Frank grabs a sculpture and tosses it at them, before running as they start firing on him, destroying a display case he behinds and then blasting some old animal skeletons. Suddenly, a mummified corpse in a case appears to come to life, smash its way out, and stomp towards the deputies. They fire on it, as it's revealed that Cyrus and Stuart are manipulating it to make it look as though it's moving. They drop it when it gets shot up beyond repair, while the deputies

continue looking for Frank, only to be taken aback when another sarcophagus breaks its way out of a crate and slides across the floor. Meanwhile, after Judge finishes his business, the sarcophagus hits the edge of some steps and Cyrus and Stuart raise it up, opening the lid to reveal Frank inside it. Excited that he's got some of his ghostly virility back, Judge happily shoots his guns into the air, not seeing the Reaper come running at him from behind, wielding a big scythe, which he uses to slice him in half. The deputies are about to shoot

Frank, when Magda shows up and he punches her out and runs through the revolving door while carrying her over his shoulder. Two other cops show up at that same moment but, when they try to chase him, Cyrus and Stuart spin them around in the revolving door. However, they're unable to stop the Reaper, who slips right past the door and flies over Frank as he runs with Magda to his car.

Frank shoves her into the passenger seat and drives off, with the dizzy cops staggering out of the revolving door and shooting at him. They try to give chase, but Cyrus messes up one car's engine, while Stuart accidentally gets sliced up by a blade in another and comes out of the car's exhaust. Meanwhile, Frank drives with the Reaper chasing after the car, and he ends up on Holloway Road. The Reaper lands on the roof of his car and, after Frank tells Magda to keep her head down, he whips

out his scythe and slices through the roof, the blade missing Frank's neck by just a few inches. With the blade right under his chin, Frank tries to remove it while continuing to drive, when he's hit with a flashback of what happened with him and Debra on that same road years before. Just like back then, the car goes over the edge of the road and tumbles down into the woods, stopping on its side while leaning up against a tree. Magda, frightened and convinced that Frank is a madman, promptly

crawls out and across the ground, as Frank tumbles out, trying to catch her. He has another flashback, this one of Debra falling back onto the ground, when the Reaper appears and pounces on Magda. Frank tries to stop him but he quickly kills her by squeezing her heart and disappears when Frank leaps at him, landing on Magda's corpse. As he looks at her, he gets a flashback to Debra with the number 13 carved into her forehead, and after he jumps off Magda, her spirit appears, angrily accuses him of murdering her, and as she goes to the other side, she yells, "You bastard! You're sick! Is that how you get your kicks?! Did it feel good killing me? Bannister, did it feel good killing your wife?" Once she's gone, Frank runs back through the woods, screaming frantically.

At the police station, Dammers tells Perry that he doesn't think they'll see Frank again, that he's far too resourceful... and then, he shows up. He tells Perry that Magda's body can be found near his car on Holloway Road, but he hesitates and doesn't answer when asked if he had anything to do with her death. Lucy, who's giving a statement, sees Frank and tries to approach him, when Dammers has him handcuffed and taken away. Lucy tries to intervene, saying he hasn't done anything, but

Frank tells her to go home, adding that the dinner the two of them shared earlier was a sham, as, "I was doin' my job. I don't give a damn about you. I don't give a damn about anybody." He's taken into the back and Lucy stomps out and to her car parked on the opposite side of the street. Climbing in, she sits there, thinking about what Frank just said, not hearing Ray, who pops up in the backseat and is offended that she's not paying attention to him, rambling about how they do have a good

relationship. Meanwhile, Dammers, after using his authority to get rid of Perry, starts interrogating Frank. First, he talks about a woman who was able to stop the beat of a frog's heart, implying that Frank has similar abilities which he's using to kill people. Frank insists he's not a murderer, telling Dammers about the Death-like figure he's been seeing, but Dammers says this figure is something the rational part of his mind has conjured up as the one behind his own murders, saying that the line of

people who've died from crushed hearts started in 1990, with the death of Debra. He goes on to note that Ray and Magda were people he'd been in conflict with recently, then asks what the man in the restaurant's restroom did, "Piss on your hush puppies?" By this point, Frank's nerves are virtually shot. He sits there with his hands on his head, trembling horribly, and Dammers takes this as an attempt on his part to use whatever powers he has as a way of killing him. He rips open his shirt to reveal he's wearing a lead breastplate to protect

himself from just such a thing, before declaring that he thinks he's behind every single one of the strange deaths that have occurred. Some time later, Cyrus and Stuart visit Frank as he sits in a cell, passing through several rooms to reach him, including the cops' changing room and a cell housing a guy Cyrus knows and tries to talk to. When they get to Frank, they try to tell him about how much trouble he's in and they need to get him out, but realize he's not listening to them. Moreover, as he stares ahead in a totally broken manner, they

realize he doesn't even see them, meaning he doesn't believe anymore. Outside, Dammers watches Frank sit there, saying he's grappling with his guilt. A cop passing by tells him they have no physical evidence linking Frank with the deaths but Dammers says, "Doesn't matter. I expect this case to suicide long before it ever reaches trial... They always do."

On another of the nasty, rainy days this town often has, Lucy drives to Frank's unfinished house. She walks inside and looks around, followed by Ray, who comments, "So much for the dream home." He then finds a plan of their house, with sticky notes showing where each bit of haunting activity is to take place and what activity it's to be, much to his anger. He takes one of the sticky notes off and, trying to get Lucy to see it, holds it up, only to then struggle to get it off his fingers. Lucy watches the

note float through the air and out the window. She walks out there and finds it's where Frank had the basketball court built... which he's now converted into a flower garden; Ray's response is to comment, "Perfectly good basketball court gone to pot." Lucy hears the phone ring inside and goes to it to hear the answering machine pick up a message from Mrs. Bradley, who begs for Frank's help in driving out the "evil one," whom she says her daughter is convening with in the house. Lucy

makes her way back to the Bradley House, ducking behind a bush when she sees Mrs. Bradley walk out the front door and carry a bucket around the back. Lucy runs for the door, with Ray absentmindedly following her and talking to himself, when he sees a horrific vision of the house and is scared at the thought of Lucy going in there. Inside, Lucy searches for Patricia, finding her on the landing at the top of the stairs. Mrs. Bradley comes back into the house and the two of them

take cover in Patricia's room. Lucy tells Patricia how she believes her mother is delusional, and Patricia tells her how her mother makes her keep an urn containing her father's ashes in her room as punishment for causing him to commit suicide. She goes on to tearfully say, "She says I'm evil, just like Johnny," then embraces her and asks her to come with her into her mother's room. There, she finds a box of many old newspapers covering Bartlett's murder spree and her perceived involvement in it. Patricia says the murders were all his doing and

that she couldn't escape him, while Lucy urges her to get out of the house. They then hear something and Patricia looks out the door to see her mother coming. She has Lucy hide inside the closet, saying she'll take her mother down to the kitchen so she can get out. After Mrs. Bradley enters the room and Patricia takes her downstairs to make her some coffee, Lucy lingers in the closet and finds a utility knife with the initials "F.B." on it. She then takes the opportunity to sneak downstairs, while a cutaway shows something evil emerging from the

urn in Patricia's room. Lucy waits at the bottom of the stairs for the all clear, not seeing a form moving through the wall behind her. She takes the opportunity to go out the door, with Ray appearing and urging her to do so. He wanders about, only to be faced with an entity that smashes through his face. Lucy runs back to her car and gets in, not seeing Ray's spiritual body get flung onto the hood.

Lucy returns to the jail and visits Frank in his cell, trying to tell him about what she found. However, as he lays on his cot, she finds him unwilling to respond to or even acknowledge her, as he turns on his side away from her and moves away when she touches him. She becomes frustrated, saying that his acting like he has no feelings is just that, an act, and that he does it because he's scared. She asks him what he's afraid of and Frank rolls back over and sits on the edge of the cot, telling Lucy he doesn't want to hurt her. She tells him that's a

bunch of bull and gets him to face her, wiping away his tears and getting him to allow her to embrace him. When he does, Cyrus and Stuart reappear to him and they walk out the door to give them privacy (at least, Cyrus does; he has to literally drag Stuart out). Frank pulls away, then sees a number on Lucy's forehead. Almost immediately, the Reaper comes through the door for her and Frank lunges at him, only to go right through him and hit the door. The Reaper grabs Lucy's heart but, fortunately, Cyrus and Stuart

come back in and tackle him off her. Frank grabs and holds Lucy, as Cyrus and Stuart struggle with the Reaper through the walls. Realizing they're not going to be able to hold him forever, Frank tells Lucy to call for the deputy to let her out of the cell. She does and, as they wait for him, Frank hears Cyrus and Stuart continuing to struggle with the Reaper, when things suddenly go quiet. Stuart fumbles through the wall and tells Frank he thinks they got him, when the Reaper plants his scythe

through his head, causing him to dissolve to the floor, and he reaches in and crushes a glowing orb in his hand. Cyrus comes in and grabs the Reaper, while Frank kicks open the door, knocking out the deputy on the other side as soon as he unlocks it. He and Lucy run out of the holding area and down a hall, only for Dammers to show up at the other end. He pulls a gun on Frank, and then the Reaper appears behind them. Realizing this, and while Cyrus holds the Reaper off, Lucy takes the

opportunity to trick Dammers, running to and behind him, saying that Frank has gone insane. Dammers points and prepares to shoot Frank, only for Lucy to blast him with a fire extinguisher. He falls into the corner and Frank, seeing the Reaper destroy Cyrus, runs for it, taking the opportunity to kick Dammers on the way out, taking his gun.

Frank and Lucy run through the station's garage and down a narrow alleyway that leads outside. There, Frank tells Lucy he can't protect her this way, that he needs to have an out of body experience. He puts the gun to his head and, telling Lucy to walk the other way, prepares to pull the trigger. She stops him and then, in the next scene at the clinic she works at, injects him with a drug to slow his heart and lower his body temperature. She then puts him in a large cooler, warning him that there will be tissue damage if he stays in there

longer than twenty minutes and that she might not be able to revive him. She closes the door, turns the knob to freezing, and the two of them have one last moment before Frank sits down in a corner, preparing to leave his body. Outside, Lucy gets together everything necessary to revive him, when Dammers appears. Looking inside the freezer, he makes it clear he has no intention of letting her revive him, throwing her off the door when she goes to open it. She grabs a utensil but he takes out an Uzi, forcing her to give up. At that moment,

Frank's spirit leaves his body and stumbles out into the lab. Surprised to not see Lucy, he falls through the floor down to a lower one and tries to get his bearings. Outside, Dammers handcuffs Lucy in the back of the police car he took to get there, then gets in the driver's seat, though not before putting a rubber, doughnut-shaped cushion there for him to sit on. She starts screaming at him to let her out, causing him to freak and turn the radio on to drown her out with music. They drive off, as Frank

emerges from the clinic and sees this. He also sees that the Reaper is chasing the car and he clumsily flies over the town after them, passing through trees and houses. The Reaper reaches the car and gets in the back with Lucy. Before he can kill her, though, Frank comes at him and grabs him. He's unable to hold onto him, though, and he lands in the road, his spirit getting run over by cars and then split in half when one hits him from behind. He falls to the road and reassembles, as the Reaper pulls out his scythe and comes at him. Frank gets down when a massive truck comes at them, hitting the Reaper and pushing him back, while Frank merely gets squashed again.

Dammers drives Lucy to the cemetery, saying he finds them to be very restful. Again, she becomes enraged and screams at him, causing him to grab at his head. When he does, she sees a swastika tattooed on his right palm in the rearview mirror, to which he admits, "I knew Charlie. Spawn Ranch, 1969. First assignment. I was the family's... sex slave for six months. Six... months, in the service of my country, disguised as a filthy hippie!" He suddenly starts freaking out, saying he wants out of the car, and gets out, ignoring Lucy's screams as he

walks to the front of the car. Looking at the clock in the car and, seeing that there's only ten minutes left before the cold becomes dangerous to Frank, attempts to unscrew the part of the seat she's handcuffed to. Dammers, to the point of hyperventilating, unbuttons his shirt, revealing numerous scars and lacerations, saying, "My body is a roadmap of pain." He goes on to describe the source of each one, how long he was undercover, and what each cult forced him to do, while Lucy uses a quarter to try to unscrew what she's

handcuffed to. He says, "I have withstood excruciating pain, but I will not be broken. I have suffered for my country... Lucy, but pain has its reward. The power of the mind is absolute." He starts muttering to himself and moving his hands in place on either side of his head, when the police car suddenly starts by itself and the headlights come on. Dammers thinks he's doing this himself, while Lucy believes it's Frank's spirit. The car goes in reverse and, indeed, Frank is driving it. Unfortunately, Hiles shows up and yanks him out

and tosses him into a grave, causing him to hover right over a decaying corpse, while the police car smashes through the corner of a tomb behind it, spilling out a coffin to reveal an old skeleton. More coffins dump out, with one skeleton tumbling out and knocking Dammers to the ground. The Reaper arrives and comes at Hiles with his scythe. Hiles brandishes his machine guns but gets sliced up the center before he can do anything. Lucy finally frees herself, when the Reaper reaches the car and gets

into the backseat with her. He grabs her heart and starts to squeeze, when Frank says, "Hey, asshole," and blasts him off her with Hiles' machine guns. She gets out of the backseat and goes to run for it, as Frank continues fending the Reaper off. Dammers jumps up and grabs her, but she grabs a skull and smashes him in the face, allowing her to climb into the driver's seat and shut the door. While Dammers tries to get at her, Frank floats off the car's roof and continues firing on the Reaper. Lucy drives away, with Dammers chasing after her, as Frank manages to blast off parts of the Reaper, including his face. His cloak collapses and all of him turns into dark-colored ectoplasm.

Frank tosses away the machine guns, then grabs the Reaper's snarling face and asks him, "Who are you?" He just hisses in response and Frank, in turn, slams him repeatedly against a grave and throws him up against the tombstone, demanding he reveal his identity. When slammed against the tombstone, the face changes into that of Johnny Bartlett, who sneers and laughs at him. He drips down the front of the tombstone, telling Frank he got out of hell and that he's been, "Carrying on the good work. Got me a score of forty." Other spirits emerge from the graves,

with one, Harry Sinclair, telling Frank he wants to shake his hand for avenging his death, as he was Bartlett's final victim in life. Bartlett laughs over him being totally wrong about that, then seeps into the crypt below the grave, as does the rest of him. Realizing he's escaping, Frank jumps in after him and watches as he crawls away while trying to reform himself. He runs and tackles him, and the two of them start fighting in the crypt. Frank manages to punch, headbutt, and impale Bartlett with his own scythe, removing his demonic

disguise and exposing his actual spirit. Now that he's totally defenseless, Frank is about to bring the scythe down on him, when he's suddenly yanked out and finds himself back in his body, covered in frost and struggling to breathe. Lucy, who used a defibrillator to revive him, is aided by her superior in getting him back in fighting shape. Frank tells Lucy it's Johnny Bartlett and, thinking Patricia's in danger, sends her to the Bradley House to save her.

Pulling up to the house and running inside, Lucy finds Patricia in the study and tells her they need to get out. Like before, though, Mrs. Bradley comes down the stairs and attempts to put a stop to it, telling Patricia to get upstairs. This time, Lucy intervenes, telling Mrs. Bradley that this is going to stop, and when she tells her that she knows Frank's knife is in her closet, she's aghast that she went into her room. She goes back upstairs, Patricia following after her, much to Lucy's frustration. She loiters downstairs and almost goes into the study,

when a grandfather clock next to the doorway slightly shakes back and forth. She walks on into the study, as the wind blows in through the open windows, and looks at a picture of young Patricia on the wall. Patricia then shows up in the doorway and tells Lucy that her mother is willing to go to the police now, but they have to wait for her to come down. Lucy insists they must go immediately, telling Patricia that Johnny Bartlett has returned, when Patricia reveals that he visits her at night and torments her. As Lucy continues

trying to get Patricia to leave with her, Bartlett's ghost appears behind her, telling Patricia that he wants to kill Lucy now. He walks into the room, bragging how the next kill will give him eight past John Wayne Gacy's body-count, while another nine will allow him to surpass Ted Bundy. Patricia, again, tells Lucy they should wait for her mother, while Bartlett complains about Frank's interference and how Andrei Chikatilo, the Russian cannibal, is bragging that he's killed over fifty. Lucy, despite

seeing how Patricia appearing to caress the air in front of her when she's stroking Bartlett's cheek, offers to let her stay with her. Bartlett, again, says he wants to kill Lucy now and Patricia, appearing to agree to Lucy's offer, says, "I'd like that," giggling as Bartlett licks her around her right temple. Patricia goes into the kitchen under the pretense of getting her coat, where she calls her a, "Patronizing do-gooder bitch." Bartlett brings Patricia's attention to the knives hanging on the

wall, telling her to kill Lucy while he watches. Patricia takes the largest butcher knife and repeatedly stabs it through Bartlett's chest, something the both of them appear to really enjoy. He then hugs her from behind, while Lucy goes upstairs to see what's taking Mrs. Bradley. She walks to her room, calling for her, but when she opens her door, she's horrified to find her blood-covered corpse lying on the bed.

Patricia appears behind her and, shouting maniacally, comes at her with the knife. Lucy quickly closes the door in her face, causing her to stab into the door, then she opens it and punches Patricia twice in the face. Patricia uses her foot to shove her to the floor, yanks the knife out, and comes down at her with it. Lucy rolls out of the way, lays down across Mrs. Bradley's body, and shoves Patricia back with both of her feet. She quickly gets out of the door, closes it on her, and locks it. She thinks she's safe, when Patricia blasts

through the door with a shotgun she grabbed in there. She quickly tries to crawl away, only for Bartlett's form to come up through the carpet. She turns back around but he grabs her from behind and pulls her back, attempting to strangle her. Frank arrives and, running upstairs, grabs the base of the carpet, yanks it up, and, as Bartlett struggles within it, throws him over the railing. Lucy has Frank follow her, as Patricia blasts her way out of her mother's bedroom and chases after them. They take refuge in her own bedroom, when Bartlett

comes through the painting hanging above the bed, jumps down on it, and grabs Lucy from the back of her neck. Frank grabs the painting and yanks Bartlett off Lucy, only for him to turn around and come through the back, struggling with him and grabbing him by the neck. However, Frank smashes the painting through the bed's railing, forcing out Bartlett's spirit, who heads into the urn on Patricia's dresser. Frank grabs the urn and closes the lid, containing him inside. As Patricia starts blasting

through the door, the two of them duck and Frank sees a nameplate on the urn's base, revealing that the ashes inside are, in fact, Bartlett's. He says they need to take them to a church and Lucy says there's a chapel in the old sanatorium. They promptly climb through the window and head across the property to the sanatorium, climbing in through a window leading into one of the wards.

They rush through the corridors, not knowing where they're going, when they see the beam of a flashlight in the room behind them. They hide in an old kitchen as Patricia, now with a light taped to her shotgun, enters. They take cover behind some machines and Patricia, not finding them, gives up and looks elsewhere. After looking around the corner and seeing her on the opposite end of the hallway leading away from the kitchen, they quickly slip into another corridor across from them and momentarily split up to search for the chapel.

When they do, Frank suddenly finds himself in a vision of what happened the day of the massacre, though he does learn from a doctor's apparition that the chapel is on the fourth floor. He starts up there, only to see a vision of Bartlett bringing out a shotgun and swinging around to shoot the doctor. Frank tries to save the man but only manages to hit the wall and bring himself back into reality. He tells Lucy where the chapel is and they head up there; unbeknownst to them, Dammers arrives. Frank has another momentary vision of the

massacre, this time seeing young Patricia walking among the panicking people while wielding a scalpel. When he snaps back into reality, Patricia comes around the corner ahead of him and fires. Lucy has to get him to duck and the shot blasts a window in a door behind him. The two of them run for it on up the stairs, Patricia continuing to chase and fire on them, just missing Frank and blowing a hole in the wall. Running through the corridors and in and out of various doors, Frank puts things in

Patricia's path to block her shots, and them sees another vision, this time of Bartlett shooting an orderly. Snapping out of it, he hides from Patricia, while Dammers grabs Lucy and takes her hostage. Unable to find Lucy, Frank has to hide from Patricia again, this time in a ward, slipping under one of the beds and putting a cover over himself. Dammers struggles with Lucy, slamming her against the wall, but she whacks him in the groin and clobbers him before running on ahead. She blocks his path and then takes cover inside an old elevator, taking it up as he throws a frustrated tantrum at not being able to get at her. As Frank hides from Patricia, he sees that she did take part in the massacre, firing the shotgun even back then, much to Bartlett's delight.

Lucy's elevator gets stuck between floors and Patricia, hearing this, runs out of the ward. Frank sees when Bartlett killed Harry Sinclair, then runs out of the ward and onto the fourth floor, finding the boarded up door to the chapel. Hearing Lucy struggling nearby, and stepping on and breaking a loose board with his foot, Frank finds her and tries to get her loose, but can't. She gives him the urn, which she's been carrying this whole time, and he runs back to the chapel. Setting the urn down, he starts breaking through the door, smashing open a

hole allowing him to look in and see a beautiful beam of light inside the chapel, which is virtually pristine. But when he backs up, he knocks over a small statue of the Virgin Mary, and though he catches it, the pillar it's sitting on falls and hits the opposite end of what he set the urn on. It goes flying through the air and into another corridor, where it's caught by Dammers. Frank tries to get him to give him the urn but Dammers, mocking his belief about what's in the urn, dumps the ashes out, releasing Bartlett. Dammers then goes on to talk

about what he believes to be Frank's psychology, that it's all to satisfy a need for self-glory, while Frank angrily puts down the statue of Mary and picks up a metal rod. Dammers whips out his Uzi and fires, hitting Frank in the left arm and sending him tumbling back into the next room. Frank staggers to his feet and tries to flee, as Dammers chases him, telling him he doesn't want to shoot him in the back and ordering him to turn around. Frank sees Patricia appear on the opposite end of

the hall and gives Dammers what he wants and turns around. He then falls back through the hole in the rotted floor, as Patricia shoots and blows Dammer's head apart. Frank falls all the way back to the first floor, while Patricia finds Lucy and fires at her. The elevator suddenly heads back down and Patricia chases after Lucy, while down on the first floor, the badly injured Frank sees a vision of Patricia and Bartlett playfully chasing each other and actually start to make out.

Lucy makes it to the bottom floor and runs to Frank, but just as he starts to regain consciousness, Patricia comes in and knocks Lucy out with the butt of her shotgun. This triggers another flashback, as he remembers seeing Bartlett kill Debra as the Reaper, followed by him and Patricia carving 13 into her forehead with his utility knife. Seeing the two of them standing over him, he gasps, "You killed her," and Bartlett, as he embraces and caresses Patricia from behind, says, "You're next, pal." Patricia pumps her shotgun and

points the barrel at Frank's head, only for it to click empty. Frustrated, she instead beats on Frank with the gun, while Bartlett keeps Lucy from interfering when she regains consciousness. Patricia puts the rifle up against Frank's neck, forces them both against the wall, and slowly starts to strangle him. Frank struggles, trying to break loose, but is too weakened from his injuries and succumbs to the strangulation. To Lucy's horror, Patricia tosses his limp body aside, as she and Bartlett plan to make her their next victim. Patricia grabs a blade from

a nearby counter but Bartlett shakes his head, saying it's not good enough. She tosses it away and then, grabs a pickaxe, which he's more than happy with. Patricia, slicing at the air with it, says, "I'm in the mood for a little vivisection," and is about to bring the blade down on Lucy, when Frank's spirit grabs her from behind and yanks her own spirit out of her body. As the tunnel to the afterlife appears, Frank drags her into it with him and Bartlett gives chase, flying up into the corridor after them. They travel very, very far up it, with Frank struggling to

restrain Patricia and ultimately losing his grip enough to where Bartlett is able to yank her free. Frank ends up on the other side and looks down to see Bartlett embracing Patricia, saying, "See ya later, Frank! We gotcha! We're goin' back down to get us some more!" Frank is about to jump back after them, when Cyrus and Stuart show up, now in the form of angels. All three of them watch as the corridor suddenly turns demonic, and Bartlett and Patricia's joy turns to terror. Stuart warns Frank

what's about to happen isn't going to be pleasant, as dozens of nasty, worm-like tentacles emerge from the corridor's walls, grabbing at and then literally going through the evil spirits' bodies. The view pulls back to reveal this is all happening inside the body of another, much large worm-like creature, which gobbles them up and heads down into the fires of hell. Frank is taken aback by this, while Cyrus comments, "Ah, the old express bus to hell. No lines, no wait."

Frank looks around heaven in awe, with Cyrus and Stuart telling him the perks of the place, when he's greeted by none other than Debra. She tells him, "It's time to go home," and he says, "I am home." Cyrus and Stuart, however, tell him it's not his time yet and motion him back to the corridor. Cyrus tells him, "Start livin', dude," and they send him back down, with Debra adding, "Be happy." He reenters his body as Lucy cries over his death, only to be relieved when he revives and sobs happily. Some time later, the two of them are enjoying a picnic as

Frank is getting rid of the past by having his house destroyed. Lucy says she has something to tell him but, before she can, Sheriff Perry pulls up. Getting out and apologizing for the interruption, he tells Frank that they found a lot of Ouija boards at the Bradley House and that Patricia got a hold of them right after she was released from prison. Moreover, when Mrs. Bradley learned of Patricia's involvement in Debra's murder, she kept her sedated but was unable to do anything about Bartlett. He then mentions that he has a lot of

vacation time coming up and suggests the two of them collaborate on a book about the events. Frank says, "If you're lookin' for a collaborator, how about your guardian angel over there," motioning towards his patrol car. Perry quickly turns around, but is relieved to see nothing there. He laughs and heads to the car, saying Frank had him going, and drives away, unaware that a very unhappy-looking, ghostly Dammers is sitting in the backseat. Lucy comments, "Boy, that Dammers. He sure looks pissed," and Frank says, "Yeah," then realizes that Lucy admitted to being able to see him. She explains that, just like him, what she's been through has altered her perceptions, before the two of them get back to enjoying their picnic.

After seeing Heavenly Creatures, Danny Elfman was eager to work with Peter Jackson and agreed to score The Frighteners before he even knew what it was. Now, it goes without saying what an awesome composer Elfman is but, for me, his score here is one of his more forgettable. It's one of those scores that definitely works when you watch the movie, and it has a lot of the tropes you associate with his music, like an energetic bounciness and occasions of vocalizing voices, not unlike what you get in his many scores for Tim Burton, but other than an Addams Family-style, funeral dirge aesthetic that the movie starts off with, I can't recall any of the specific themes and motifs from this movie. Again, they work in the moment, but they're not something that stick in my head. The most memorable musical aspect of the movie for me is Don't Fear the Reaper, which plays over the ending credits. It's a cover done by a New Zealand alternative rock band called the Mutton Birds, but I actually thought it was the original Blue Oyster Cult version. Regardless, it's a memorable and appropriate song to end the movie on.

Like with just about all of Peter Jackson's movies, The Frighteners is a very entertaining movie. It has a lot of memorable characters and great actors playing them, Jackson's direction is right on target, it's shot very well, has a wonderfully atmospheric setting, numerous exciting and entertaining setpieces, some great humor with the ghosts, and a lot of really good visual effects work that has held up remarkably well. There are flaws, like the rules concerning the ghosts and their interactions with the living being inconsistent, some loose ends are never tied up, the movie loses a lot of its comedy around the halfway mark, some of the CGI does look badly dated, the score is a bit forgettable, and, as usual with Jackson, the movie does tend to go on to the point of exhaustion, especially when you watch the director's cut, but overall, it's an entertaining flick and definitely a good one to watch during the spooky season. Speaking of which, happy Halloween, guys. See you next year.