Why Peter Jackson’s Frighteners is now a poignant watch

It was Sir Peter Jackson’s first real foray into the sometimes nightmarish world of Hollywood, and it turned out to be Michael J Fox’s last leading role in a feature film.

It was the movie that helped the nascent Weta Digital to showcase their immense potential.

Twenty-five years on and what’s striking about The Frighteners is how well the effects and Jackson’s tension-building have held up, how beautiful the Canterbury portside town (now a Christchurch suburb) of Lyttelton looks and just how muddled and confusing the final act is of an otherwise entertaining rollercoaster.

Viewed now, The Frighteners isa fascinating look back at a time when Jackson was transitioning between his low-budget indie sensibilities and the blockbusting fantasies that were to come.

It’s easy to see what attracted producer Robert Zemeckis to the project. This offers the same dark humour and crowd pleasing mix of broad comedy and genuine chills and thrills that infused Zemeckis-directed stories like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Death Becomes Her. Although, if there’s a movie this most resembles in feel, it’s Tim Burton’s, albeit somewhat more anarchic, 1988 hit Beetlejuice, with its visceral, nightmarish visions and setpieces that are truly laugh-out-loud.

Here, Jackson and co-writer Fran Walsh navigate the balance of light and dark well, striking a tone that allows both Weta to work their spooky magic and Fox to showcase his comedic timing, pratfall skills and serial carcrashing abilities. His manic, twitchy ‘‘psychic investigator’’ Frank Bannister is a compelling presence, the Canadian-born actor playing him with a nervous energy and awkwardness that makes you wonder if he was feeling the early effects of the Parkinson’s that has limited his career since.

For those unfamiliar with the plot of the movie that Universal made the mistake of releasing in late summer, rather than just prior to Halloween in the US, but was a Boxing Day release smash hit here (in a very crowded cinematic summer of 1996-97), The Frighteners takes place in the American midwest town of Fairwater.

As we join the action, the shadow of death has once again descended on this seemingly cursed hamlet. Three citizens in the past week have succumbed to a mysterious heart condition that has now killed more than 30 people in four years. The mood hasn’t been this edgy since the infamous Bradley-Bartlett murder spree in 1964, when 12 people were killed at the local sanatorium.

So while Frank, able to see spirits since a traumatic accident killed his wife five years ago, thinks it’s the perfect time to ply his trade of staging hauntings with the help of a trio of trapped souls, even they aren’t so sure.

Best viewed as a flawed, but fun romp, a knockabout counterpoint to the more serious Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners, like Jackson’s 1994 masterwork, also doubles as a poignant snapshot of a Christchurch that was destroyed by the devastating 2010-11 earthquakes. It’s hard not to get slightly teary when spying various haunts long since reduced to rubble, or distant memory.

The Frighteners is screening in Christchurch as part of this year’s Terror-Fi Film Festival.