the audience applauded

I'll tell you why so serious

A Masterpiece!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

After the traumatic experience of losing his beloved wife Debra (Angela Bloomfield) in a car accident, the architect Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) acquires the ability of seeing ghosts. He quits his profession; abandons the construction of his dream house to live with Debra and becomes a con man, using the ghosts Cyrus (Chi McBride), Stuart (Jim Fyfe) and The Judge (John Astin) to haunt houses and then charging the dwellers to exorcise their homes.Dr. Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado) visits the reclusive Patricia Ann Bradley (Dee Wallace-Stone), who was a former delinquent and girlfriend of the serial–killer Johnny Bartlett (Jake Busey) that lives with her mother, she notes that Patricia has bruises. Lucy returns home and together with her husband Ray Lynskey (Peter Dobson), they are haunted by a poltergeist. She calls Frank and soon Ray has a heart attack. Lucy meets Frank in a restaurant and he realizes that Soul Collector is marking numbers in the forehead of his victims before killing them. Frank becomes prime suspect of the police due to his knowledge about the murders and he is arrested. Meanwhile the psychotic FBI agent Milton Dammers (Jeffrey Combs) comes to the city to investigate the murder cases. When Frank finds that Lucy will be the next victim of the Reaper, he takes the ultimate decision to fight the entity to save her."The Frighteners" is a weird, but entertaining and original film by Peter Jackson. The story is too violent for comedy and too silly for horror; therefore the genre is indeed a combination of comedy, romance, horror and fantasy. The special effects are excellent and state-of-art for a 1996 movie. Michael J. Fox shines in the role of the psychic Frank Bannister and Trini Alvarado is perfect in the role of his romantic pair Dr. Lucy Lynskey. All the characters are interesting and peculiar, and the cast has great performances independently of the special effects. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Os Espíritos" ("The Spirits")

Wow, I can not believe that I have never seen this movie in full before.I had seen pits of here and there now and again.I love this movies It one the most fussiest horror movies of all timeI loved the p'ot the movie as it started of the word go,This was a really fun movie to watch and it was not scary at all , I don't think it wanted to be!I could not stop laughing at what some of the ghost were doing One think did bug me in this movie was , that some ghost ending going though thinks but some ghost can land on a car and not go though As i was wacthing this time flew as it was really fast pace and the acting was really good of the whole castAnd the effects for ghost were really done well

This film did not live up to it's hype or its potential. I missed it's initial release and just watched it very recently, having heard of it for years and really buying into the hype, I found that there just wasn't really much to it. The main issue I have is that it is not successfully horror or comedy. The over the top and sometimes slap-stick comedy was ridiculous. There was not a single point in the film when I felt the urge to laugh out loud. As far as horror, there really wasn't much. Of course there were ghosts, put they were more or less just characters in a murder mystery. My next gripe pertains to casting. Michael J. Fox was the only person considered for the role, and for obvious reasons. He does good with the slightly self deprecating roles. The audience finds it easy to sympathize with his characters because he portrays them slightly pathetically. Also, I have issue with Dee Wallace. Peter Jackson has said that she was cast because of her overwhelming sense of innocence, especially recently coming off of E.T., unfortunately that effect is lost with the years. She is now a major player in numerous B-Horror films, roles which I identify her from more so than E.T.. It is more that E.T. was the exception and roles like Patricia Bradley are the norm. As soon as I saw her I thought to myself "she is in someway responsible for all of this." Moving on from casting there are the obvious issues with the special effects. 1996 was a big year for special effects and CGI releases, but this one really missed the mark. If you look at other films released around the same time (Independence Day, Twister, Mars Attacks), although they are not perfect, they are a whole class better than the the effects from this one. CGI shadows didn't match the direction of the light source, the main threat was just a blanket of muddy CGI, and there was no real quality threshold for the ghosts, they really varied from one to another. The last and most apparent fail was the title. I get the\at he has the ghosts that work for him (although their compensation for their services is not readily explained) and the are frighteners because he uses them to haunt potential clients. That being said, they really took backseat to all of the other story lines of the film. The title makes you expect things that the film is not going to follow through on.Although I did not care much for it and it did not meet my expectations, I was not bored while watching it, which counts for something. It was entertaining while it was on, though I doubt I would watch it again. The best thing about the film was cameo of Peter Jackson looking absolutely hilarious.

This movie only becomes a kind of horror movie towards the end of it. Even then there is humor. I find this to be a rather funny show. Michael J. Fox does his usual fine job of acting, Trini Alvarado is cute as the widowed love interest, John Astin is good as a spirit named the Judge. There are a couple of things that do not hang together though. Why can the spirits go through walls, doors, etc but a vehicle that runs into them carries them along? Why did the murderer spirit's hand pass through Lucy's head and then he could punch her and Frank in the face and bodies? How about that FBI agent? Talk about a whack-a-doodle!! And how about that haircut of his? The sheriff is played by a long character actor Troy Evans. the mouth that roars "R. Lee Emery" appears here as the cemetery control freak sergeant and as usual about all he does is rant and rave.