Review of The Frighteners (1996) by Jesse O — 25 Oct 2013

This movie is what would happen if Evil Dead 2 and Ghostbusters had a drunken, passionate night of lovemaking. This would be the result of that lovemaking. This movie certainly has its tonal issues and a lackluster climax, but it's still a lot of fun and it certainly reminds me a lot of the Evil Dead 2 in some of its silly moments, and this movie does have plenty.

Unfortunately, I did find the whole experience to be a little disappointing. Like I said, the movie does have it's silly moments, and many funny characters, Dammers for example was a really entertaining character.

But it's never really consistently funny or scary. The movie jumps back and forth between serious and funny like it's nothing, and I found that to be problematic because I never knew how to look at the movie.

Is it a scary movie with some light comedic touches or is it a comedy with some horror? I think in this movie the horror undercuts the comedy and vice versa. It's not like The Evil Dead 2 where both elements can coexist and actually end up working together to make the movie an incredible experience.

I don't think this script is as focused as it could've been, which is why the horror and the comedy don't really coexist that well. But the movie is still quite entertaining with a good cast, and it has some pretty clever use of special effects.

Of course, since the movie is almost 20 years old then it means that it looks a bit outdated, but there's still some really cool scenes here. Another problem is that the climax of the film was really unsatisfying.

Unsatisfying in the sense that they pretty much rush through it to get to the finale, almost as if they forgot that they had a limited time span to tell their story. It was also unsatisfying to see Frank Bannister, after dying, being sent down back to earth just so they could have the stereotypical happy ending with Frank falling in love with Lucy.

I thought that was really lame. It's not like the movie was depressing or anything that Frank dying would've really changed how you felt about the movie. So that liberal use of deus ex machina was pretty lame.

Still, the movie's entertaining with some really funny moments and some cool special effects. Even if it's a little disappointing in some regards, I had fun watching this movie. It should've been better than it was, but still good;.