'The Frighteners' triumphs as well-crafted schtick

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): Balance is hardly the word that comes to mind given the Scream meets Ghostbusters theme. Yet, despite its juggernaut of characters, multi-level sub-plots and slam-bang special-effects, The Frighteners comes off surprisingly balanced. And expensive. And unpredictable.

Standard expectations are foiled at every turn, as a not-so- common team of ghostbusters goes on the trail of a supernatural killer, wringing peskier humor from its otherwise common shlock horror premise. The wisdom?

Well, for one, comedy and thriller are not so incompatible after all. And although New Zealand low-budget gorefest specialist Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles, Braindead a.k.a. Dead Alive) seems hardly the man to prove it, he's, well, really done it this time. The Frighteners may be a far cry from his redemption, the powerful psychological thriller Heavenly Creatures, yet it certainly knows how to pack a wallop without coming across as extraneous.

On board as executive producer is Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), whose reputation for wild imagination may or may not explain it. But he is, after all, the man who once brought us Death Becomes Her and the Back to the Future trilogy. He's obviously dipping back into familiar territory, and then some.

The movie opens in the sleepy provincial town of Fairweather, the kind of suburban setting that would gratify those connoisseurs of 1980s horror kitsch (dilapidated mansion on top of an isolated hill, a few spooky characters, and the specter of doomsday looming in the air). Nobody knows this better than "psychic investigator" Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox). Snooping around funerals with business cards in hand, he runs a bogus ghostbusting business.

The modus operandi is as simple as it is compelling. His three ghost buddies wreak havoc in selected households and Frank shows up to "exorcise" them -- to the tune of US$300 and thereabouts. Such scenes include the usual clanky mayhem and flying objects of pans, saucers, toasters, babies, you name it. Yet they also reveal something else. Frank, bless his soul, is not a complete fraud. He can definitely see and communicate with the dead.

Things change, however, when people all over town start dying of heart attacks. Soon, Frank is called upon to exorcise for real, as only he and his spectral "business partners" know the identity of the killer. Cloaked in black and armed with a sickle, the supernatural Grim Reaper, alias "Soul Catcher", is a dead- ringer for Scream's psychopath. His modus operandi? Sticking his hand into victims' chests and squeezing their hearts to smithereens. Yikes? You bet.

As Frank and his obligatory romantic interest, Lucy Lysnky (Andie McDowell look-alike Trini Alvarado from Little Women) run around dancing a grim dance with Death, they have to contend with some local history involving a executed serial killer (Jake Busey), a deranged, agoraphobic woman (Dee Wallace Stone), her even scarier aging mother, a jumpy and delusional FBI agent (Jeff Coombs), more spectral sightings and the slasher hard on their heels.

Although the meandering plot is convoluted and hybrid, splicing together bits of DNA from The X-Files, Ghost, the 1980s horror genre, and slapstick comedies, there is actually a discernible continuity beneath it all. Granted, it may just be a case of inspired improvisation, not deliberate planning, but whatever it is, it works, and amazingly so.

Then there are all those spiffy visual effects, of course. The entire brainchild of a New Zealand team under the supervision of Wes Ford Takahashi (Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, the Back to the Future trilogy), they are as good as anything ever done by Industrial Light and Magic. Watch out for a scene in which an ectoplasmic face drips down a tombstone (not to mention the running profanity that accompanies it).

At glance, the preternaturally cute Fox seems back on terra firma, thanks to his irresistible blend of tongue-in-cheek boyishness and the sardonic intelligence such movies are seemingly made for. Frank Bannister, however, is a complex character deserving of greater emotional range than meets the eye.

And yet Fox manages to respond to the material with a hitherto untapped confidence. Superficially, Frank may not be a far cry from the shabby, downbeat perpetually frazzled misfits he is used to playing, thanks to that rip-roaring Back to the Future. But there is an innate seriousness and an understated aura of tragedy about him as he teeters for all eternity on the brink of a nervous breakdown. It is this side of him that makes the balancing act possible.

Alvarado's acting is also par for the course. She is an appealing mix of wholesome femininity, innocence and competence. There is a genuine rapport between her and Fox as they protractedly skim the surface of their feelings, rendering their relationship all the more interesting. Look out for a scene when she's having dinner with Fox while the spirit of her dead husband looks on, a sly take on Ghost's bleeding cauldron of grief.

Much of the comedic mileage comes during the movie's first part, largely thanks to the ultracartoony quirky "good" ghosts. The Judge (John Astin) is a grouchy, Old West gunslinger type with a warped sexuality (watch him cavort with a mummy and you'll know what I mean); Cyrus (Chi McBride) is decked out in a 1970s outfit and loathes it; Stuart (Jim Fyfe) is, well, the geek. They revel in conning the living and provide the perfect antidote to Frank's cynicism.

But the breakneck pace finally overruns itself, propelling the movie into a loud and muddled roller-coaster conclusion that one can't help but wonder whether the "wallop" it packs up hasn't finally overstayed its welcome. But that this realization should come so late in the movie is testament to The Frighteners' not inconsiderable triumph.

Beyond the heaping dose of visual candy, the message is intact, subtle though it may be. The deconstruction of the horror genre no longer means self-parody (goodbye, Wes Craven). Well- crafted shtick will also do fine.