Early Work Not So Great

I was as thrilled as the next Elf-freak about Lord of the Rings’s success at the Oscars and I don’t know who all took the gamble on Peter Jackson but they deserve the grand prize for taking a risk on that guy. (And I think, considering the bazillions of dollars the movies have made, that the risk takers have done just fine.) What brings me to this topic is a film called The Frighteners made in 1996 and starring Michael J. Fox and directed by … Peter Jackson. This movies rates a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and I’d heard it was good and defied genre etc. and since I’m studying scary movies right now and since I think Peter Jackson is so fantastic, I rented it recently. As Jar Jar Binks would say: PEEEEYOOOUSSA. Bob and I started watching it together and Bob left before the first act break. I finished it, and it did have a few elements to recommend but the dialogue was consistently painful and the special effects didn’t quite work. MJF saved the day and we are damn lucky that PJ has improved much since then.