The Frighteners is a 1996 comedy/horror film directed by Peter Jackson about a psychic private detective who stands in the way of a murderous Grim Reaper-like creature. As with his later films, Jackson filmed the movie in his home country, New Zealand on location in Lyttelton and Governor's Bay. Released on July 19, 1996, the film earned $16 million at the U.S. box office.

In 1998, Jackson commissioned Universal Studios home video to release a laserdisc special edition of the film (with a 4 1/2 hour documentary) as well as a standard edition DVD. Some collectors spent up to $500 to get a copy of the out-of-print laserdisc special edition on eBay.

A Director's Cut Edition DVD was released in December 2005, to coincide with the release of Jackson's film King Kong. This edition included the 4 1/2 hour documentary and feature commentary of the laserdisc version, as well as a short introduction by Jackson recorded for the DVD. The Director's Cut DVD set is available in Regions 1, 2, 4, and 5.

After a car accident in which his wife, Debra, was killed and he was injured, Frank Bannister develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts. After losing his wife, he then gave up his job as an architect, letting his unfinished "dream house" sit incomplete for years, and put these skills to use by befriending a few ghosts and getting them to haunt houses in the area to drum up work for his ghostbusting business; Then Frank proceeds to "exorcise" the houses for a fee. But when he discovers that an entity resembling the Grim Reaper is killing people, marking numbers on their forehead beforehand, Frank tries to help the people whom the Reaper is after! Written by Anthony Pereyra

Frank Bannister is a man who goes around town claiming that he can talk with and see ghosts, though while he can, some believe (though he is, in fact) a common con-man who gets ghosts to make it appear though there is a haunting in whichever house is chosen, wherein he sweeps into action and pretends to remove the ghosts. All this goes on until one day strange deaths start occurring all throughout town and Frank ponders this, while his love interest, Lucy Lynskey, whose husband had only just died of the same cause, goes to the house of a deranged old woman who keeps her grown-up daughter locked up, saying that it is for the good of everyone else. Soon, it is revealed that even the ghosts themselves can see the force that is killing everyone off; a deceased mass murderer come back from Hell itself to continue killing. It is therefore up to Frank, Lucy, as well as two ghosts, to find out how to end the fiendish ghost from killing any more, while all the while trying to shake off a deranged detective from arresting them both. Written by Theshapeshifter