The Frighteners [Blu-ray]

One of the best Movies for people that like semi scary movies with lots of funny moments. A Classic movie you will add to your collection once you see it! Michael J Fox and Peter Jackson nail this fun scary movie. Def recommend if you haven't seen it. If you have you know its worth another watch

The movie arrived on time and in perfect condition. I have loved this movie for many years. Wonderful Michel J Fox movie.

I just got through watching the Director's Cut of "The Frighteners." I have to say first off that this is one of my favorite films of all time. I don't particularly like horror films (I don't like to be scared) and so when this movie came out at the theater my sister tried to get me to see it and I refused because I thought it would scare me.Needless to say when it came out on VHS she talked me into watching it and I regretted not going with her to see it in the theater. The story is unique and well told.I have to admit that there are some small gaps in the plot that may leave questions in your mind if you watch the original release (especially if you watch it more than once because you always catch more the second time around), but I never found it enough to be that distracting. Part of this comes from them trying to cut the film down to less than two hours. The Director's Cut answers a lot of these questions and I watched the entire thing. It was definitely worth buying and I enjoyed it. All the behind the scenes stuff was fantastic.I could go on about the story, but I'm more of a Visual Effects person and so I think that for me, that's also why I like this movie so much. At the time the effects that they used were revolutionary. Many of the effects, such as the ghost crawling under the carpet in the beginning utilized proprietary code that was written specifically for this movie. Also the compositing was awesome. There were only a couple of spots in the movie where I could tell that the lighting wasn't quite right, and that was out of well over five hundred visual effects shots. To keep this in perspective, this movie was being filmed around the same time the first "Toy Story" was released, so that was the level of computer generated imagery that they had to work with. I think that they had fewer errors in their work than "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" that was just released. I saw more incorrect lighting and bad animation in "Narnia" than in "The Frighteners." It just goes to show you that advanced technology does not always make a better movie.Also, the release of this movie was pushed up by four months, which caused them to rush with wrapping up production. The DVD is also well worth buying if you're at all interested in film making, visual effects or any similar field. The documentary has a ton of behind-the-scenes footage, a tour of the early WETA computer and props department, and three full compositing breakdowns that show how they put the special effects together.I wouldn't say that you should buy this movie if you haven't seen it because everyone's tastes are different, but I would definitely borrow or rent it so you can decide whether you want it or not. Before the Director's cut was released, the original release on DVD was selling on eBay for thirty dollars or more because it was out-of-print and people were desparate to find it. I wound up paying nearly twenty for a used copy. Obviously this movie has a big cult following at any rate and that makes me happy, because I think that this film has been overlooked and underrated. It is definitely on my list of best movies of all time.

The movie was great I would definitely purchase again

The story is the undoing of this film. The components are inconsistent, veering wildly from fantasy to comedy to horror, never truly doing justice to any of the ideas it tries desperately to showcase in the time allowed. If they had stuck with one premise instead of this scattershot approach then this might have been a great film. Instead, you have a ghost-buster Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox), trying to bilk unsuspecting homeowners into thinking their homes are suddenly haunted (the joke being he provides the ghosts). It's at that point that another plot is shoehorned into the story, that of a vengeful (dead) serial killer anxious to have the highest body count ever achieved. Instead of gaining the credit though, the blame is placed on Frank. Then the movie becomes "the wronged-man on the loose" with Frank trying to clear his name. To complicate matters further, an insane FBI agent (an overwrought Jeffrey Combs) shows up with an instant vendetta against Bannister. Unfortunately, this proved to be one villain too many and it challenged the focus of the story about a faux grim reaper. It's at this point that a judicious rewrite should have taken place. They had one element too many and should have excised it from the story. Instead, they foisted this version on the public and it was a not a financial success (which they blamed on the film Independence Day, the Summer Olympics, and a lack of marketing). The critics were torn; Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs down. Word of mouth could have saved it if it had been a film worth bragging about. Obviously, that didn't happen.Years later, I'm still torn. I love/hate this movie. At times it's brilliant, the humor is mostly great, the special affects a wow. Trini Alvarado was perfect (as the only rational character in the film). Michael J. Fox was fun. Dee Wallace was appropriately creepy. Loved the faux grim reaper. But. Just bits and pieces of this film work, the rest is just annoyingly extraneous. It always leaves me wanting more/better from the likes of Peter Jackson.