Peter Jackson’s extremely irreverent horror comedy featuring Michael J. Fox will haunt audience on a new streaming platform

When you think of the director Peter Jackson and actor Michael J. FoxTwo very important film franchises come to mind. The Lord of the Rings And Return to the future are the most important projects of these two Hollywood legends. However, they were both involved in one of the most bizarre horror comedies ever made. It’s the gem of the 90s FrighteningAnd in a few days, it will be available to broadcast on Peacock.

As part of their October update, which brings many horror films to take during the frightening season, Peacock adds Frightening In their film catalog on October 1. Other choices of horror arriving on peacock include the Elf series, The ring,, From twilight to dawnand the first three Shout movies.

InFrighteningFox gives life to a crook. Frank Bannister was once a prosperous man, but after a traumatic event involving his wife, he acquired psychic capacities. In other words, he can speak and see ghosts. Instead of using his skills for something honorable, Frank decided to deceive innocent people. He convinces ghosts to haunt the helpless victims, so that they can hire him to exorcise them. The problem is that the last entity of the city exterminates the living as well as the dead, and Frank can do nothing about it. According to the rotten synopsis tomatoes:

Formerly architect, Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) is now transmitted as an exorcist of evil spirits. To strengthen his facade, he says that his “special” gift is the result of a car accident that killed his wife. But what he does not count on is more people who die in the small town where he lives. While trying to reconstruct the supernatural mystery of these murders, he falls in love with the woman (Trini Alvarado) of one of the victims and deals with a crazy agent of the FBI (Jeffrey Combs).

Frightening Bombed at the box office, totaling just over $ 29 million on its 26 million dollars budget. Critics did not love him exactly, and he currently has 66% on Rotten Tomatoes on the scoring of criticism. The audience score is slightly higher, at 71%.

“ The frightening “were the presentation of Weta Digital before the franchise” The Lord of the Rings ”

Frightening Arrived in theaters in 1996. Not only that, but he received a summer outing, near major productions like Independence day,, Mission: ImpossibleAnd Tornado. Although its reception is not what Universal Pictures projected at the beginning, Frightening was a small production that could actually compete with some of the most important films of the year in a major aspect: its revolutionary visual effects that always look great to date, and were rare enough for a horror film.

But creating them was not easy. The project was ambitious from the start, with Jackson insisting that the VFX gunshots could be created by Weta Digital, his company of visual effects based in New Zealand which had not yet worked on a major film. Executive producer Robert Zemeckis saw the fight and finally asked for help from the legend of Industrial Light & Magic, Wes Takahashi. Takahashi came out of ILM at the time and began to work in Weta with Jackson.

Frightening was a complicated film to finish. Universal Pictures decided to publish it earlier than originally, and Jackson had to rely on VFX artists outside of Weta in order to finish the film in time. It was, for sure, a learning experience for the director and his company of visual effects which would reach his peak during the production of The Lord of the Rings Franchise for years later.

Release date

July 19, 1996

Execution time

110 minutes