Universal liked The Frighteners enough to do it a favor that turned out to be anything but. Originally planned for October 1996, the movie was bumped up to July, landing two weeks after Independence Day and right as the Atlanta Olympics swallowed television screens across the country. A movie practically built for Halloween suddenly had to fight aliens, summer weather and the Olympic torch.

The story started several years earlier as a possible Tales from the Crypt movie. Robert Zemeckis hired Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh in January 1993 to expand their treatment into a feature, then stayed aboard as executive producer. The pair wrote it while making Heavenly Creatures, and when The Frighteners became Jackson’s first big-budget Hollywood production, Hollywood came to him. Wellington and the port town of Lyttelton, helped by plenty of miniature work, became small-town America without Jackson having to leave New Zealand.

Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox, Back to the Future) can see dead people, and he’s figured out how to make the condition pay. His three ghostly partners, including a decaying frontier judge (John Astin, The Addams Family), haunt unsuspecting homeowners. Frank then conveniently appears and offers to clear the spirits out for a fee.

It’s a good little business until people around town start dying for real. Frank can see something marking the next victims before they go, which makes his sudden appearances look less psychic and more suspicious. Dr. Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado, Little Women) gets pulled into the mystery, while deeply strange FBI agent Milton Dammers (Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator) becomes convinced Frank is considerably more dangerous than he looks.

That’s where The Frighteners starts showing its teeth. Jackson can go from cartoonish ghost slapstick to genuinely ugly serial-killer horror in the span of a scene, and the whiplash is either part of the fun or the thing that throws you out completely. Looking back, I can see that critics were just as divided in 1996. Roger Ebert gave it one star, a rarity. Kenneth Turan at the Los Angeles Times had a blast.

Fox makes the tonal juggling act easier because he’s such naturally likable company. Frank is a hustler, but Fox keeps just enough sadness underneath the fast talk to make the character worth following when the movie gets darker. Combs goes the other direction entirely. His Dammers twitches, whispers and stares like a man whose nervous system filed for divorce years ago. He’s ridiculous right up until he isn’t. A little of Combs goes a long way and I maxxed out on him long before the credits arrived. 

Danny Elfman’s score keeps the whole carnival moving, but the technical ambition may be the movie’s biggest legacy. Weta Digital was still a baby, growing from roughly eight people to around 50 as it tackled some 570 effects shots. The hooded Grim Reaper became Weta’s first major fully computer-generated character. Best of all, the road to Jackson’s Middle-earth runs straight through this haunted town.

The effects can’t all hide their age, but that almost makes the movie more interesting now. You can see Jackson and his team figuring things out in real time, pushing digital effects while still leaning heavily on miniatures, makeup and practical work. Five years later, The Lord of the Rings would make Weta one of the biggest names in visual effects.

The Frighteners earned only about $16.5 million domestically, but home video gave it a much longer life. The Director’s Cut, Jackson’s commentary, and that famously enormous making-of documentary helped turn a summer misfire into a cult favorite. Universal may have released it in the wrong season but you can’t keep a good fright(ener) down. The movie eventually found the right audience and is now a popular title when it appears in revival cinemas.