Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs, R. Lee Ermey and Jake Busey.

The Frighteners tells the story of Frank Bannister (Fox), an architect who develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts after his wife's murder.

However, the spirit of a mass murderer appears posing as the Grim Reaper, able to attack the living and the dead, prompting Frank to investigate the supernatural presence.

Despite a rushed post-production schedule, Universal was so impressed with Jackson's rough cut on The Frighteners, the studio moved the theatrical release date up by three months.

Wracked with guilt over her death, he has become a cynical con man, using his abilities to "exorcise" hauntings staged by ghosts in his employ: street gangster Cyrus, nerdy Stuart, and The Judge, an Old West gunslinger.

As Frank helps Lucy communicate with Ray's ghost, he witnesses a Grim Reaper-like entity crush the heart of a man marked "38".

He is interrogated by Milton Dammers, an eccentric and unstable FBI agent traumatized by years of torture and sexual abuse while working undercover with Satanic cults.

Aware he cannot protect her from the Reaper as a human, Frank has Lucy induce a near-death experience by slowing his heart with drugs and placing him in a freezer.

She kills her mother, while Frank and Lucy trap Bartlett in his urn and flee to the abandoned sanitorium, intending to use its chapel to banish him back to Hell.

Robert Zemeckis viewed their treatment with the intention of directing The Frighteners as a spin-off film of the television series, Tales from the Crypt (which he helped produce).

[10] Rick Baker was hired to design the prosthetic makeup for The Judge, portrayed by John Astin (the detachable jawbone was later added digitally).

[18] Makeup artist Brian Penikas (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) fulfilled Baker's duties.

[4] Instead, The Frighteners received an accelerated release date, four months earlier than planned, and an additional $6 million in financing, with fifteen digital animators and computer workstations (some were borrowed from Universal and other effects companies in the US).

[22] The closing credits play a cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" performed by New Zealand alternative rock band The Mutton Birds.

[29] The Frighteners ended up being a box office disappointment, mostly due to competition from Independence Day;[30] in interviews conducted years after The Frighteners' release, Jackson commented he was disappointed by Universal's ubiquitous marketing campaign, including a poster which "didn't tell you anything about the picture",[10] which he believed was the primary reason the film was not a financial success.

[16] Additionally, the film opened on the same day the Atlanta Summer Olympics began; when Jackson realized this and told the studio, they answered "'We don't think so; our research indicates that's not the case...' And I just thought how the hell do they know?

The website's critical consensus states, "Boasting top-notch special effects and exuberant direction from Peter Jackson, The Frighteners is visually striking but tonally uneven.

[32] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times stated "Director Peter Jackson, at home with all kinds of excess in New Zealand, keeps everything spinning nicely, not even losing a step when the mood turns increasingly disturbing.

"[33] Janet Maslin from The New York Times enjoyed The Frighteners, but "walked out the theater with mixed emotions," she commented that "Peter Jackson deserves more enthusiasm for expert, imaginative effects than for his live actors anyhow.

"[34] Jeff Vice of the Deseret News praised the acting in the film, with the performances of Fox and Alvarado in particular, but said that there were also "bits that push the taste barrier too far and which grind things to a screeching halt", and that if "Jackson had used the restraint he showed in Heavenly Creatures, the movie could have "been the best of its kind".

"[39] Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four, and felt that Jackson was more interested in prosthetic makeup designs, computer animation, and special effects than writing a cohesive storyline.

[42] Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle stated that "instead of moving the horror genre in new directions, The Frighteners simply falls apart from its barrage of visual effects and the overmixed onslaught of Danny Elfman's music score".

[43] The Austin Chronicle's Joey O'Brien, said that although the screenplay was "practically loaded with wild ideas, knowingly campy dialogue and offbeat characterizations", it "switched gears" too fast and too frequently that "the audience is left struggling to catch up as [The Frighteners] twists and turns its way unmercifully towards a literally out-of-this-world finale".

[44] At the 23rd Saturn Awards, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films honored Jackson with nominations for Best Director and Best Writing, the latter he shared with wife Fran Walsh.

[46] To coincide with the release of Jackson's King Kong,[37] Universal Studios Home Entertainment issued a double-sided director's cut DVD of the film in November 2005,[47] which featured a version of The Frighteners that is 14 minutes longer.