1/5 Amazon Does it Again....
  by Ronald G. Helfrich Jnr
This is not a review of the movie The Frighteners but of Amazon.com and their policy of bleeding reviews from one DVD of a movie over to another regardless of how different they are.

You have to hand it to Amazon.com. The anti-film heads who run the site have never meet one version of a DVD a movie that they didn't consider exactly like another. Amazon.com repeatedly bleeds reviews from older DVDs into newer one. So even if the DVD is a different version of the film than the previous one (in this case Amazon brings together reviews of the directors cut of The Frighteners with those of the theatrical version) or if the new DVD is a better or worse transfer relative to the earlier DVD (there are numerous instances where reviews of a poor quality DVD by one company are bled together even if the newer DVD is done by quality companies like The Criterion Collection) Amazon.com doesn't care. Instead Amazon's policy is to merge reviews of previous DVD releases with those of later DVD releases creating, in the process, a kind of postmodernist hogepodge where real differences in DVD technology or content no longer matter.

I guess postmodernism has indeed triumphed.

5/5 Movie
  by Dorys Santana (Miami, FL United States)
Purchased as a gift fot my hubby to add to his collection. Loved the movie.

1/5 Unbelievably bad
  by Gary A. Smith (Los Angeles, ca USA)
I saw this movie in the theatre when it first came out but remembered nothing at all about it. Now I know why. I can hardly believe that Peter Jackson made this awful mess of a movie. It fails on every level. I only paid $3 for the DVD but it wasn't even worth it at that price.

5/5 Love this Movie!
  by S. French (Tennessee)
I saw a small part of this movie on tv and stopped right away because I wanted to see it all. I looked everywhere trying to find it. Due to the age of the movie online was my only option. This movie is wonderful. I'm normally not into 'scary' movies. This movie has such a wonderful balance of fun and scary, it is a MUST SEE!

2/5 A great movie for the kids...
  by M. Ryan Fairbanks (Cleveland, Ohio)
Yet another horror movie in which I found little redeeming value, despite universally positive reviews...The Frighteners. This is another movie that attempts to tackle the near impossible task of successfully fusing horror and comedy, and as with most others of its kind, I felt it failed quite miserably. Strongly lacking in horror, jokes that range from tacky to just plain goofy, and jam packed some of the cheesiest CGI you've ever laid eyes on, I'm stunned at the overall 4.5 star rating.

The movie uses this principle: Sometimes when a person under-goes a traumatic event, they gain some sort of phenomenol ability (Or something like that). In Frank Banister's case, he is involved in a car accident and in turn is able to visualize the spirits of the dead among us. So Frank is a con man who uses his ghost buddies to scare people around town in order to rake in clients for his ghost hunting business. When a malevolent spirit comes to town and starts claiming victims, ghosts and humans alike, Frank needs to put aside his selfish ways and save the town. And he needs to solve the mystery of a serial killer. And have an out of body experience to battle the evil ghost. And save his girlfriend all while evading the police...Honestly there is so much going on in this movie, you just have to see it for yourself to even begin to grasp what's going on here.

This is clearly a movie that at its time of release was all about the special effects, and not much else. As I mentioned it is over-brimming with really dated looking CGI, and in addition to the movie's subject matter being goofy to begin with, it really only enhances the corniness. In fact if you edited out some of the language and the brief gory moments, I really do think this could pass as a kids movie. The "humor"? A crusty old ghost makes some sort of comment aluding to erectile dysfunction if that's any indication as to what kind of classy flick we're dealing with here. On top of that, most of the characters are unlikable such as Frank, boring like his girlfriend, and others are just plain obnoxious like the two serial killers. The only saving grace, which should come as no surprise, was Jeffrey Combs as the weirdo FBI agent. He was the only thing remotely interesting and funny, as well as being menacing at times.

Overall The Frighteners struck me as a dud as it didn't scare me or make me laugh as it apparently was intended to. I guess I learned that just because Peter Jackson's name is on it doesn't make it a winner. For Jeff Combs fans, this one is a must. Otherwise I'd say you can safely skip this one.