The Frighteners 2/4 stars (Chuck)

Michael J. Fox stars as Frank Bannister who has, what appears to be, a money-making scheme going on - that most of the towns folk are wise to. Little do the suspicious town's folk know that Frank can actually see and communicate with the dead.

Unfortunately, this comedic con-man bit can't decide if it wants to be a comedy, or something much, much darker. Eventually it ends up being a disturbing super-natural killer movie. Peter Jackson had a good opportunity to make a very funny paranormal comedy, which it is for about 45 minutes, then it starts taking a dark turn. Frank quickly finds out that he is involved in a fight to stop an evil force that is ripping people's souls out of their bodies, as he see's a premonition in the form of a number appear on the next victim's forehead giving frank only minutes to attempt to thwart - in vain - the attempts of the entity responsible for these supposed heart attacks, as deemed the cause of death.


The ClearPlay Experience
Let's chalk up another "oversight" by the MPAA - our moral and parental compass for movies. Despite the rating descriptor saying Frighteners was rated R for Terror/Violence, I lost track as to how many times non-violent scenes had skips in them. Which means that because there is no sex in this movie that dialogue-driven scenes were full of profanity. Thanks MPAA panel members for yet again not labeling another movie with the entire type of content that makes the movie, what it is. Guess they thought the violence completely overshadowed the language on this one.

Filtering overall was quite a pleasant experience. The undertones of the movie in the last 45 minutes are very dark. The 3rd act is when this movie has completely abandoned comedy and taken on serial killer. Despite violent/disturbing content and profanity content both being skipped, the murderous psychosis of one of the main characters in the last 3rd of the movie leaves this one still only appropriate for older teens and above.


Frighteners is rated R, but with ClearPlay, on the surface, it does skip the content that is hard to watch. This would have kept Frighteners at a 13 for me... visually distinguishing that content was skipped was performed very well. It's the murderous killing spree (with a rifle) depicted near the end that, even though no one is shown being bloodily killed, the nature of 2 people blinded by blood lust is still probably only appropriate for 18 and up. I never saw Natural Born Killers, but it sure reminded me of how it felt to simply see the trailer for NBK. This tone really made the movie a disappointment. It had a huge potential to be a good movie and it fell flat on it's face.