Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Sorry, this movie sucks

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

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")

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.

Wow! Just watched this movie and what a trip it was!! I can't believe something as lame as Ghostbusters garnered all the attention while this gem was swept aside like the red-headed step-child. So many fantastic characters and twists and turns it made my head spin. I loved everything about this flick including the awesome special effects & the silly humour. Fox shone like he always does and the dude playing the insane FBI agent was brilliant!! Great story, wonderfully directed with great actors and a magic blend of hilarity, scariness, suspense, shocks and spookiness! I read some of the reviews here and can't believe how negative some of them are & the reasons they give for their negativity. eg "Oh boo hoo! It was awful coz the music sounded like some music I heard in another movie" and "Mr Jackson used CGI & expensive cameras and stuff & I don't think he should be allowed to, so I'm going to punish him with lower marks" etc etc Seriously? I think some people just love to be miserable.This is well worth seeing - it's just become one of my favourite movies. And now I just need to find (and buy) the Director's Cut for even more fun!

This one has received mixed Reviews. It's hard to imagine that anyone could be critical of the imagination that went into this entertaining, if overblown, Movie. It has enough energy and creativity for three Films. But it doesn't know when to quit. It just goes on and on, almost, but not quite, draining the fresh flourishes from the Film.There are Artistic touches that impress and it looks very much like the Cartoony Movies that Jackson had made up to this point. But this may have suffered from too much Zemeckis and too much Money. The Director never needed a lot of Money to make Cool, Off-Beat, and Artistically rewarding Stuff.Just one example, in the opening Scene we see an Evil Entity haunting a Women and it is shown protruding from behind walls and carpets. It is different and diabolical. But it won't be the last time this effect is used. Suffice to say that repetition is the bane of this really good Film.There are Plots on top of Plots and not just in the Cemetery. It could be just a bit too much for some, and yet it is so charming that others may say, give me more.