The Frighteners
Important note - There is a Theatrical version and a Director's Cut of the movie. The Director's cut runs 14 minutes longer and this synopsis caters for both versions. A thunderstorm filled, rainy ni…
The Frighteners
Important note - There is a Theatrical version and a Director's Cut of the movie. The Director's cut runs 14 minutes longer and this synopsis caters for both versions. A thunderstorm filled, rainy night in the small town of Fairwater. A woman called Patricia Bradley (Dee Wallace) is been chased by a mysterious entity around the old-looking house in which she lives with her mother (Julianna Mcarthy). Patricia is screaming and fearing for her life. Her mother appears from her bedroom with a pump action shotgun and shoots the mysterious figure as its shape appears through the carpet at the top of the stairs. Some of the residents of Fairwater are gathering for a funeral in the community as the local newspaper editor Magda Rees Jones (Elizabeth Hawthorne) and her assistant are reporting the story of another seemingly innocent death amongst the residents. Psychic investigator Frank Bannister (Michael Andrew Fox) arrives at the funeral trying desperately to advertise his services. As he leaves in his wrecked and dirty looking Volkswagen, his reckless driving causes him to nearly hit an on-coming truck. As he swerves to miss it, he crashes straight through a garden fence. Ray Lynskey (Peter Dobson) comes out of his house infuriated and threatens to sue him for the damages. Frank gives him his business card and drives off after deliberately driving over one of Ray's garden gnomes. On the other side of town Ray's wife Doctor Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado), visits the Bradley house to treat Patricia's cuts. She bandages her hand and tells her that she needs to take her to hospital but her mother (Julianna McCarthy) refuses to let her go. She tells her that she never leaves the house and to just give her some antibiotics. Lucy notices how timid and fragile Patricia is and as she gets ready to leave, she notices some bruising around her neck. Patricia's mother rushes Lucy out of the house and tells her that her daughter is not to be trusted. She was involved in cold-blooded murder. Becoming intrigued by Patricia's history, Lucy watches a documentary about the notorious serial killer Johnny Bartlett (Jake Busey). "In the space of 27 blood-soaked minutes, 12 innocent people gunned down by hospital orderly John Charles Bartlett. Patients, medical staff, visitors, no one was spared in this madman's rampage through Fairwater Sanatorium.Not even the hospital chapel provided sanctuary,as those in prayer were gunned down on their knees. A seemingly senseless crime, Bartlett's motive remains a mystery to this day. Six years earlier Charles Starkweather had murdered 11 people in a Nebraska killing spree". The black and white footage shows the horrific scenes at the hospital of the victims and the families, as well as the footage of Bartlett being escorted to court by the police boasting about his disgusting act. "Fifteen year-old Patricia Ann Bradley, daughter of the hospital administrator, was also implicated in the killings. She was madly in love with the psychopath Bartlett. 2,200 volts of electricity ended the life of Johnny Bartlett, the unrepented killer. As they threw the switch he was heard to scream: I got me a score of twelve. Beat that!" In what some consider a miscarriage of justice, Patricia Ann Bradley was sentenced to life imprisonment although it was never proven that she actively participated in the killings. Five years ago, Patricia Bradley was granted a conditional release by the State Governor. Today she lives a reclusive life back in the family home".... Ray gets sick of listening to it and switches off the TV. He joins Lucy on the bed. (Director's cut) He tells her that he's booked their most favorite table at the Excalibur themed restaurant for their wedding anniversary. He starts to kiss her ,but he sees Frank's card that he's positive he tore up and the bed starts rocking and shaking with Lucy on it. It hovers up in the air as the couple panic. Objects start flying everywhere in the kitchen. Lucy calls Frank and he arrives to rid the house of the supernatural. Instead of charging the couple,he offers to do it in return for not having to pay for the damaged fence.Ray reluctantly agrees and Frank uses his "equipment" to capture the spooks and pours them down the sink. As he is packing his stuff up,he is shocked to see a glowing number 37 on Ray's forehead. Lucy cannot see this and Ray kicks Frank out of the house. Frank arrives at his home to his half-built house that he hasn't finished working on. As he gets out of is car,a spirit exits the trunk - a young, 1950's nerd called Stuart (Jim Fyfe), followed by a 1970's, afro-haired ghost called Cyrus (Chi Mcbride). The ghosts are Frank's associates who help him con the local residents by haunting their homes, so that Frank can step in and reap the rewards. While Stuart is just about to join them in the house, Frank closes the door and he gets stuck because his ectoplasm has become too stiff. Frank asks them if they had anything to do with the glowing number appearing on Ray's head but the spirits don't know what he's talking about. (Director's cut) Cyrus helps pull Stuart through the door. The pair of them moan about Frank took their helps as granted and had not giving them enough respect.The next morning,Frank is having a shower and Cyrus pops his head up through the plughole and tells him that he and Stuart want a business meeting in the kitchen. Cyrus and Stuart are talking to Frank in the kitchen about how he doesn't appreciate their loyal service. As they are talking, gunshots go off, as another spirit, a judge from the 1800's (John Astin) enters the room trying to shoot the ghost dog Rhustler as he gnaws on his jawbone. Frank gets his jaw back and tells him to put his guns away. (Director's cut) Frank cuts some wood off from the roof of his house for his fireplace. He sits looking through the newspaper, trying to find people that have recently lost family, while The Judge contemplates going off into the graveyard to rest his decrepit body. Frank tells him he needs him his help in order to finish his house but The Judge tells him to stop with his scheming ways and to stop using death to make a living. (Director's cut) Frank walks out of the living room and is horrified to see a Grim Reaper figure moving down the stairs towards him. The figure moves in close to him but it is only Cyrus and Stuart underneath a cape. They tell him they are trying to figure out different ways to scare people but Frank isn't amused and walks off angry. The next morning Frank receives a letter from his bank informing him that he owes $16,000 dollars. He needs some money fast and he calls the spirits for a meeting demanding that they up their antics to really frighten people. Cyrus and Stuart arrive at a rich woman's house and start causing fear by picking up the resident's babies and scaring the mother and her maid as they see the babies hovering through the air. Again they leave one of Frank's business cards. Frank gets the phone call and sets off. (Director's cut) Frank is trying to drive to the house as fast as he can but he keeps getting stuck in traffic because the roads are blocked with funeral cars. The Judge is sat in the passenger's seat and tells him that there is something very sinister dawning over Fairwater. But Frank isn't interested in what he's saying.He impatiently and recklessly pulls out into the line of funeral cars and dodges around the traffic. He pulls up outside the house and tells Judge to wait for him. Frank walks into the house and attempts to pull off his scheme but the woman is not interested. She has in her hand the local newspaper which shows a picture of Frank with the headline "Local conman haunts cemetery". Frank is angry. He confronts Magda Rees Jones at the local Gazette about printing the story but she tells him he is a parasite who makes money off of the bereaved and she has every right to let people know about him. He leaves and he sees that another funeral is taking place.He sees Lucy in one of the cars crying. As he walks off down the street he is shocked to see Ray running towards him. But not in human form. Ray is now dead. His spirit runs straight into him. Ray is panicking and can't understand how he's died so young and fit. He tells Frank that just before he died he felt his heart been crushed while he was working out. Frank tries to explain the rules of the afterlife to him. Ray asks Frank to give him a ride to his funeral. (Director's cut) As Frank pulls up to the graveyard in his car, Ray (not yet used to being a spirit) has trouble grabbing hold of the door handle to get out. Frank pushes him through the car door and he lands on the ground. They walk through the graveyard and Ray is petrified as he witnesses many spirits roaming the grounds. Drill Sergeant Hiles (R.Lee Ermey), the watchful spirit of the other ghosts, walks out of his tomb and orders the ghosts to get back in their graves. Frank knows there will be trouble. He tells Ray to go on ahead while he talks to the angry sergeant. The two have a fight but with Hiles's supernatural abilities, Frank has no chance.While Hiles shouts to tell the inhbitants of the graveyard who's in charge, Frank goes off to join Ray at his funeral. As Ray becomes very emotional at his tragic death, he falls into the grave as he tries to put his arms around Lucy. He is horrified as he lays on top of his own corpse. As the mourners start to leave the graveside,sheriff Walt Perry (Troy Evans) arrives to talk to Frank. Apart from Lucy, he was the last person to see Ray alive and he wants to know what condition he seemed to be in when he saw him. He says that the FBI are becoming very concerned about the amount of deaths that are happening in the town - many of the victims are healthy and have clean arteries when the autopsy has taken place but their hearts look as though they have been squeezed. Frank tries to get rid of Walt by pretending that he wants to pay his respects to Ray, in order to pull Ray's spirit out of his grave. Walt is alarmed to see Frank physically grappling with thin air and seemingly talking to nothing. As Frank and Ray get ready to leave, an emotional Lucy approaches and tells Frank that she believes in his paranormal gifts. He tells her that he has in fact communicated with Ray. Frank has dinner with Lucy and the deceased Ray at the Excalibur themed restaurant and acts as a communicator between the two of them. But Ray becomes increasingly frustrated as his wife seems to start bonding with Frank throughout the evening. She asks him why he can see spirits and Frank tells her that he was in a car accident five years earlier and sometimes a traumatic experience can alter a person's perception. Lucy opens up too. She tells Frank that her and Ray's marriage was not a happy one and just as Frank tries to console her by grabbing her hand, Ray angrily knocks over a glass of wine into Frank's lap. Thrilled that he can now use make physical contact with the real world, Ray threatens Frank and disappears. Frank goes to the bathroom to dry his trousers. A man enters and Frank is shocked to once again see a glowing number on the man's head reading 38. Frank becomes increasingly edgy as he sees The Grim Reaper figure appear and kill the man by reaching into his chest and squeezing his heart. The man's corpse drops to the floor and Frank watches as the gateway to Heaven opens up and the man's spirit goes off to the other side. Frank rushes out of the restaurant and pursues The Reaper. Lucy is escorted to the Sheriff's office by one of Sheriff Perry's deputies as a witness to the situation. Walt is told that witnesses saw Frank rushing out of the restaurant before the dead man was found. He tells his men to bring Frank in. Frank chases the Reaper in his car with Stuart, Cyrus and The Judge. He tries his best to kill it but his car just goes straight through the caped figure and it once again eludes him. FBI agent Milton Dammers (Jeffrey Combs) arrives at the Sheriff's office to meet Walt and Lucy. He believes that Frank is behind the killings. He tells them about the incident that happened five years earlier when Frank and his wife had the car crash. They discovered that Debra's dead body was found 15 yards from the car with a number 13 carved in her forehead and after the body was found, Frank was picked up wandering the forest claiming to have no recollection of the incident. Frank tracks down The Reaper at the museum where the 39th life has been taken. Frank sees on Magda Reese-Jones's forehead a number 40 glowing. She is going to be the next target. He tries to warn her but two deputy sheriffs arrive to arrest him. The Reaper appears but the officers have their guns pointed at Frank. The Judge appears and shoots The Reaper and it disappears. Cyrus and Stuart start to make people scared in the museum in order to cause a diversion for Frank to get away. In the commotion, Frank punches Magda and knocks her out, in order to carry her out to his car to safety. He drives away but The Reaper is in pursuit and forces Frank to crash his car in the vicinity where Debra died years earlier. Magda crawls from the car trying to escape from Frank who she believes to be psychotic. Frank tries to get her to listen to him but he is dazed and confused as the Reaper plunges towards her and crushes her heart. Frank jumps towards it but it disappears again and he is lying face down on her corpse. The gateway to Heaven opens and Magda's spirit jumps from her body and accuses of Frank of being a sick murderer who is responsible for her and his wife's death. Frank arrives at the sheriff's office and tells them what has happened. When Walt asks him if he had anything to do with Magda's death, he doesn't answer and he is arrested on suspicion of murder. Lucy doesn't believe it and storms out as Frank is taken through to the interrogation room followed by Dammers. (Director's cut) Lucy goes out to her car and sits inside trying to get her head around things. Ray appears on the back seat - his spirit now decaying from dripping ectoplasm. Dammers and Walt are sat in the interrogation room with Frank who looks demoralized. Dammers calls him a dangerous man but Walt refuses to believe that Frank is behind the murders. Dammers uses his power of authority to tell Walt to get out of the room while he questions Frank. Frank tells Dammers that he is not a murderer and that he can communicate with the other side. He has seen the figure of Death killing people by reaching into their chests but Dammers doesn't believe any of it and believes Frank to be responsible for the crimes. (Director's cut) Cyrus and Stuart walk into the sheriff's and start to walk through the walls of the cells to find Frank. They eventually get to his cell and try to talk to him but Frank is silent. Cyrus tells Stuart that he can't even see them anymore. He's so traumatised he's stopped believing. Dammers looks through the narrow opening of the prison door observing Frank. He tells the deputy that he doesn't even expect him to make it until the trial. He's expecting him to commit suicide. Lucy goes to Frank's house to see if she can find any evidence to clear his name. As she wanders around, Ray is looking too. (Director's cut) Ray sees on the fridge some labels describing the layout of his and Lucy's house. He realises that Frank was using his psychic abilities to con them. One of the sticky labels gets stuck to his fingers.He tries to shake it off and as he does, Lucy sees it floating towards the back garden in the wind. She walks outside and sees a nice looking garden, which Frank has made in memory of his wife in place of the basketball court. The phone rings and the answering machine picks up the message. It's Old Mrs.Bradley trying to tell Frank about her fears for her daughter Patricia. Lucy believes the mother to be dangerous and after hearing her message, heads over to their house. She hides in the bushes outside as the old lady walks out to get rid of the garbage bags. She sneaks inside, looking for Patricia. Ray walks to the house and because of his abilities the house transforms into a weird shape from his point of view. He can sense there is danger lurking inside. Patricia is at the top of the stairs and tells Lucy they need to hide. As her mother walks back in, the two of them rush into her bedroom. Lucy tells Patricia that she needs to get away and start a new life for herself. She sees an urn on the side. They are Patricia's father's ashes. He had killed himself after discovering that Patricia had been involved with a serial killer. She hears her mum coming up the stairs and tells Lucy to hide in the wardrobe. She just gets inside as her mother enters. Patricia offers to make her a cup of tea and they walk out. Lucy finds a Stanley knife in the wardrobe with the initials F.B. She realises that it's Frank's that Dammers had told her had gone missing after Debra's death. Lucy slowly walks down the stairs to sneak out. The Urn starts to glow and a figure appears in the wall behind Lucy trying to sneak up. Lucy, oblivious to the threat, rushes out of the house as Ray walks in to try and protect her. His face is sliced off by the figure's hand and as Lucy gets into her car, Ray's deformed spirit is tossed onto the hood of the car. Lucy goes to see Frank in his cell and tells him that Old Mrs. Bradley must be responsible for Debra's death. She's found his knife in her bedroom and she's crazy enough to do something like that. Frank is still in a quiet, depressed state. He hugs Lucy and he sees Cyrus and Stuart enter the room. But as he looks Lucy in the face, the number 41 glows on her forehead. He realises she is the next victim. The Reaper appears through the cell door and tries to kill her. With the help of Stuart and Cyrus, he tries to protect her in the confines of the cell. Lucy shouts for the deputy to come and unlock the door. Stuart is dissolved by the Reaper's sythe. As Frank hears the cell door unlock, he kicks the door into the deputy's head and knocks him out, so that he can escape with Lucy. Dammers walks around the corner and draws his gun. Lucy rushes up to him and tells him that Frank is crazy, as Cyrus battles the Reaper. Lucy uses a fire extinguisher to spray at Dammers to protect Frank. Cyrus's soul is taken by the Reaper and Frank takes Dammers's gun and runs out of the precinct with Lucy. He tells her that he must kill himself in order to become a spirit and protect her. He is ready to put a bullet in his head, but she tells him not to and instead helps him have a near death experience by means of hypothermia and using barbiturates to slow his heart rate. At the medical centre, Frank goes to sit in the cryogenics room and waits to slowly die as Lucy gets the equipment prepared to revive him within several minutes. But Dammers appears in the room armed with an uzi machine gun. He thinks Frank deserves to die for his supposed crimes and abducts Lucy to stop her from reviving him. Frank's spirit emerges from his dead body and the gateway to Heaven opens for him but he walks away to try and find Lucy. Dammers handcuffs Lucy in the back of one of the sheriff's cars and drives off. Frank pursues them. As he tries to get used to his abilities, he sees he Reaper rapidly jumping and flying through the town to try and approach Lucy in the car. Just as the Reaper launches onto the roof of the car, Frank flies down and knocks it onto the road. A car zooms down the road and crashes into Frank and smashes him into tiny pieces of ectoplasm. The Reaper approaches him with his scythe as Frank's spirit moulds back together. A truck approaches and rams straight into the Reaper and it is taken down the road clinging onto the front of the vehicle. Dammers takes Lucy to the graveyard and parks the car up. She desperately wants to get back to the medical centre to revive Frank's body but he tells her that he is not going to return her for several hours until there's no chance of Frank coming back. She shouts at him and he starts to freak out again. (Director's cut) As he tries to cover his ears with his hands, Lucy notices one of his wrists the swastika sign. He tells her that he was undercover with the Manson family for six months disguised as a hippy and he was used as the family's sex slave. He gets out of the car and walks several yards away and stands in front of the car breathing nervously and uncontrollably. He opens up his shirt and reveals his deeply scarred body. (Director's cut) He starts to reveal to her his experiences in the many bizarre undercover assignments over the years that he has been part of. All of the weird cults and sects he has had to be involved in, including drinking goat's blood. He says that he has suffered for his country. He says that the pain he has suffered in the different religious groups has its rewards and tries to prove that he has some psychic sensibilities. He and Lucy are both shocked as the car engine starts up. The gear stick and steering wheel move and Lucy knows that it's Frank. Frank starts to reverse the car away from Dammers as Dammers chases after it. Sergeant Hiles reaches in through the car window to grab Frank and throws him to the ground. The car crashes into a sarcophagus and coffins fall out. The Reaper approaches and slices Hiles in half with its scythe. Frank uses the sergeant's machine guns to shoot it. Lucy gets out of the car to get into the driver's seat and Dammers jumps out to grab her.She uses the skull from a skeleton to hit him and quickly gets in the car and drives off. While Dammers chases after her, Frank rips the Reaper apart with the bullets and turns it into pieces ectoplasm. He grabs the face of the Reaper and as he slams it down onto a grave a few times, the face gradually morphs into a human face and reveals itself to be Johnny Bartlett. He has returned from beyond the grave to continue his killing spree. Spirits start wandering around in the vicinity, all of who appear to be Johnny's victims satisfied that their deaths have been avenged. A spirit with the number 1 carved in his head approaches Frank and tells him he was a doctor and the first of the victims. He thanks Frank for what he's done. But while Frank is distracted, the pieces of Johnny's ectoplasm start to drip down into a tomb and gradually morph back together. Frank dives down into the ground and wrestles with him. He picks up the scythe and as he brings down the handle onto the ectoplasmic figure, Johnny's full human formed spirit is revealed. Frank is just about to destroy him with the scythe but Lucy revives his body with chest plates. He wakes up panting for breath. He tells her that Johnny's back and that she needs to go and get Patricia out of the house and save her from him. Lucy arrives at the house but her mother tells her that there's no way her daughter is going anywhere. Lucy confronts her about Frank's knife in her closet and the old lady angrily storms off upstairs. Patricia runs up after her. Lucy waits in the living room and moments later, Patricia comes back down and says that her mother is going with them. Lucy tells Patricia that Johnny's ghost has returned and is on the loose. She tells Lucy she knows and that his spirit often visits her. As Lucy stands in the doorway of the living room, Johnny appears behind her threatening to kill her. He says that she and Frank have been causing a lot of problems. Patricia goes to the kitchen and Johnny points to the knives on the wall. He wants to watch her kill Lucy. (Director's cut) Patricia repeatedly stabs the knife through Johnny's torso as they both laugh and become increasingly excited by it, almost in an arousing way. Lucy goes upstairs to see if Mrs Bradley is going with them. She sees her bedroom door open a jar and when she opens it she is horrified to see the old lady's dead body spread out on the bed covered in blood. Patricia pops up behind her and tries to stab her. Lucy tries to shut the door and the blade of the knife goes into it. Lucy punches her and they both grapple to the floor. Lucy gets up and runs out of the door, after she gets the key out of the lock and locks it from the outside. She sits on the landing stairs trying to get over the shock but bullets start exploding through the door. Patricia has got hold of her mother's pump action shotgun. Lucy tries to run down the stairs but Johnny's figure appears from under he rug and tries to strangle her. Frank arrives in time to save Lucy. He grabs hold of the rug and throws Johnny off of the landing. Patricia gets out of the bedroom firing at them maniacally. Frank and Lucy get into Patricia's bedroom and Johnny appears in the room through the portrait of her father. He tries to kill Lucy once again but Frank smashes the portrait onto the bed post and Johnny's spirit cries out as he is sucked into the urn on the bedside table. Frank puts the lid on and sees Johnny's name on the urn. He tells Lucy that they need to get to a chapel and get the ashes to the "other side". Realising that there's a chapel in the old psychiatric (now derelict) hospital, which is located just behind the Bradley house, the pair head off there on foot. They make their way into the murky looking building and walk through the hallways looking for the chapel. Patricia follows them armed. As Frank looks around, he starts to have psychic episodes where he is able to see the events that transpired on the fateful day when Johnny and Patricia went on their killing spree. He sees Johnny pushing a trolley around and he uncovers a gun and blows away the doctor who thanked Frank in the graveyard. He sees the teenage Patricia walking around with a knife ready to carve into the victims' foreheads. Through his flashbacks, Frank hears one of the doctors say that the chapel is on the fourth floor. Still believing Frank to be the murderer, Dammers enters the hospital. Frank and Lucy are forced to split up when Patricia appears in the hallways and starts shooting at them both again. Lucy has the urn but Dammers gets hold of her and throws her head into the wall. Lucy punches him and gets away from him and manages to get into the elevator before he can reach her. She starts going up to the fourth floor but it breaks down. Frank is still running upstairs and comes across the chapel. He hears Lucy cry. He tries to pry the elevator door open to no avail but she manages to pass him the urn through the door to take to the chapel. Frank puts the urn down to smash the door in but as he turns around he bumps into a statue of the Virgin Mary and it falls onto the table and sends the urn flying to the other side of the hall. Dammers catches it. Frank angrily and desperately asks for it back but Dammers opens it and releases Johnny's ashes. His spirit laughs as the dust breezes away. Frank picks up a metal bar ready to give Dammers a beating but Dammers pulls out a machine gun and shoots him in the arm. Facing away from him and holding his bloody arm, Frank sees Patricia walk around the corner in the distance ready to shoot him with the shotgun. Dammers orders him to turn around. Frank does and falls backwards as Patricia fires and the bullet blows Dammers's head off. Frank crashes through four wooden floors down onto the ground floor. Patricia starts to shoot at Lucy in the elevator. She avoids the bullets,and the elevator starts automatically going again. Bloodied, bruised and half unconscious, Frank starts to crawl along the floor of the vivisection room. (Director's cut) In his psychic flashbacks, Frank sees Johnny chasing the teenage Patricia around dead bodies as she screams "please don't hurt me". As they have a playful game of chase, covered in blood. He grabs her and they start making out on the coroner's trolley. Lucy makes it to the ground floor and rushes to Frank. But Frank is nearly unconscious. Patricia appears behind her and hits her over the head with the butt of the gun. Frank flashes back to the moment when his wife Debra died and he finally remembers exactly what happened in that moment. He sees The Reaper transform into Johnny as he's stood over his wife's body and Patricia is holding his Stanley knife. Patricia points the shotgun at Frank, ready to kill him but she is out of bullets. She kicks him and lifts him up off of the floor with the gun around his neck. Lucy tries to help but Johnny is pinning her down. Frank struggles with Patricia but Patricia has the advantage and she strangles him to death. Frank's dead body drops to the floor, as Lucy cries out. Johnny excitedly waits for Patricia to take Lucy's life as well. She picks up an axe from the vivisection area ready but Frank's spirit jumps out at her and rips Patricia's spirit from her body and takes her through the tunnel to the "other side". Johnny chases him up through the tunnel of light, and as they get half way through, he manages to pull her away from Frank's grasp. Frank carries on floating towards Heaven, as Johnny and Patricia stay hovering in the middle of the tunnel. He shouts to Frank that they're returning to Earth to get some more victims. Frank is just about to leap down after them but a voice stops him. It's Cyrus with Stuart. Frank looks down at Johnny and Patricia as their laughing turns to fear and panic. The spiritual looking, electric like portal gradually turns into the inside of a huge worm, with dozens and dozens of smaller worms wrapping themselves around them,strangling them and gouging out their eyes. The huge worm swallows them up and takes them down into the burning flames of Hell. Frank watches in disbelief and turns around to have a look around Heaven. Cyrus and Stuart tell him that it's really something. Frank sees his wife Debra approach him smiling. She tells him it's time to go home. The higher powers have said that it's not his time to die yet. Cyrus pushes him and he starts to float along the clouds. He wakes up in the derelict hospital in Lucy's arms. He demolishes his old house in order to start a new life with Lucy. Walt pulls up and tells Frank that the investigation is over. They found a stash of Ouija boards at the house and Patricia was using them to bring Johnny back from the dead. Her mother was trying to do her best to keep her sedated but there was no chance of her stopping Johnny. As Walt gets into his car and drives off, Frank sees the ghost of Dammers in the back seat. To his surprise Lucy can see him as well. She says to Frank "sometimes when you've had a traumatic experience it can alter your perception". Then Lucy uses a blanket to imitate the Reaper and laughingly chases Frank as the movie ends.
The Frighteners
Comedy,Drama,Fantasy
Film Details
Important note - There is a Theatrical version and a Director's Cut of the movie. The Director's cut runs 14 minutes longer and this synopsis caters for both versions. A thunderstorm filled, rainy night in the small town of Fairwater.
A woman called Patricia Bradley (Dee Wallace) is been chased by a mysterious entity around the old-looking house in which she lives with her mother (Julianna Mcarthy). Patricia is screaming and fearing for her life. Her mother appears from her bedroom with a pump action shotgun and shoots the mysterious figure as its shape appears through the carpet at the top of the stairs.
Some of the residents of Fairwater are gathering for a funeral in the community as the local newspaper editor Magda Rees Jones (Elizabeth Hawthorne) and her assistant are reporting the story of another seemingly innocent death amongst the residents. Psychic investigator Frank Bannister (Michael Andrew Fox) arrives at the funeral trying desperately to advertise his services. As he leaves in his wrecked and dirty looking Volkswagen, his reckless driving causes him to nearly hit an on-coming truck.
As he swerves to miss it, he crashes straight through a garden fence. Ray Lynskey (Peter Dobson) comes out of his house infuriated and threatens to sue him for the damages. Frank gives him his business card and drives off after deliberately driving over one of Ray's garden gnomes.
On the other side of town Ray's wife Doctor Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado), visits the Bradley house to treat Patricia's cuts. She bandages her hand and tells her that she needs to take her to hospital but her mother (Julianna McCarthy) refuses to let her go. She tells her that she never leaves the house and to just give her some antibiotics.
Lucy notices how timid and fragile Patricia is and as she gets ready to leave, she notices some bruising around her neck. Patricia's mother rushes Lucy out of the house and tells her that her daughter is not to be trusted. She was involved in cold-blooded murder.
Becoming intrigued by Patricia's history, Lucy watches a documentary about the notorious serial killer Johnny Bartlett (Jake Busey). "In the space of 27 blood-soaked minutes, 12 innocent people gunned down by hospital orderly John Charles Bartlett. Patients, medical staff, visitors, no one was spared in this madman's rampage through Fairwater Sanatorium.Not even the hospital chapel provided sanctuary,as those in prayer were gunned down on their knees.
A seemingly senseless crime, Bartlett's motive remains a mystery to this day. Six years earlier Charles Starkweather had murdered 11 people in a Nebraska killing spree". The black and white footage shows the horrific scenes at the hospital of the victims and the families, as well as the footage of Bartlett being escorted to court by the police boasting about his disgusting act.
"Fifteen year-old Patricia Ann Bradley, daughter of the hospital administrator, was also implicated in the killings. She was madly in love with the psychopath Bartlett. 2,200 volts of electricity ended the life of Johnny Bartlett, the unrepented killer.
As they threw the switch he was heard to scream: I got me a score of twelve. Beat that!" In what some consider a miscarriage of justice, Patricia Ann Bradley was sentenced to life imprisonment although it was never proven that she actively participated in the killings. Five years ago, Patricia Bradley was granted a conditional release by the State Governor.
Today she lives a reclusive life back in the family home".... Ray gets sick of listening to it and switches off the TV. He joins Lucy on the bed.
(Director's cut) He tells her that he's booked their most favorite table at the Excalibur themed restaurant for their wedding anniversary. He starts to kiss her ,but he sees Frank's card that he's positive he tore up and the bed starts rocking and shaking with Lucy on it. It hovers up in the air as the couple panic.
Objects start flying everywhere in the kitchen. Lucy calls Frank and he arrives to rid the house of the supernatural. Instead of charging the couple,he offers to do it in return for not having to pay for the damaged fence.Ray reluctantly agrees and Frank uses his "equipment" to capture the spooks and pours them down the sink.
As he is packing his stuff up,he is shocked to see a glowing number 37 on Ray's forehead. Lucy cannot see this and Ray kicks Frank out of the house. Frank arrives at his home to his half-built house that he hasn't finished working on.
As he gets out of is car,a spirit exits the trunk - a young, 1950's nerd called Stuart (Jim Fyfe), followed by a 1970's, afro-haired ghost called Cyrus (Chi Mcbride). The ghosts are Frank's associates who help him con the local residents by haunting their homes, so that Frank can step in and reap the rewards. While Stuart is just about to join them in the house, Frank closes the door and he gets stuck because his ectoplasm has become too stiff.
Frank asks them if they had anything to do with the glowing number appearing on Ray's head but the spirits don't know what he's talking about. (Director's cut) Cyrus helps pull Stuart through the door. The pair of them moan about Frank took their helps as granted and had not giving them enough respect.The next morning,Frank is having a shower and Cyrus pops his head up through the plughole and tells him that he and Stuart want a business meeting in the kitchen.
Cyrus and Stuart are talking to Frank in the kitchen about how he doesn't appreciate their loyal service. As they are talking, gunshots go off, as another spirit, a judge from the 1800's (John Astin) enters the room trying to shoot the ghost dog Rhustler as he gnaws on his jawbone. Frank gets his jaw back and tells him to put his guns away.
(Director's cut) Frank cuts some wood off from the roof of his house for his fireplace. He sits looking through the newspaper, trying to find people that have recently lost family, while The Judge contemplates going off into the graveyard to rest his decrepit body. Frank tells him he needs him his help in order to finish his house but The Judge tells him to stop with his scheming ways and to stop using death to make a living.
(Director's cut) Frank walks out of the living room and is horrified to see a Grim Reaper figure moving down the stairs towards him. The figure moves in close to him but it is only Cyrus and Stuart underneath a cape. They tell him they are trying to figure out different ways to scare people but Frank isn't amused and walks off angry.
The next morning Frank receives a letter from his bank informing him that he owes $16,000 dollars. He needs some money fast and he calls the spirits for a meeting demanding that they up their antics to really frighten people. Cyrus and Stuart arrive at a rich woman's house and start causing fear by picking up the resident's babies and scaring the mother and her maid as they see the babies hovering through the air.
Again they leave one of Frank's business cards. Frank gets the phone call and sets off. (Director's cut) Frank is trying to drive to the house as fast as he can but he keeps getting stuck in traffic because the roads are blocked with funeral cars.
The Judge is sat in the passenger's seat and tells him that there is something very sinister dawning over Fairwater. But Frank isn't interested in what he's saying.He impatiently and recklessly pulls out into the line of funeral cars and dodges around the traffic. He pulls up outside the house and tells Judge to wait for him.
Frank walks into the house and attempts to pull off his scheme but the woman is not interested. She has in her hand the local newspaper which shows a picture of Frank with the headline "Local conman haunts cemetery". Frank is angry.
He confronts Magda Rees Jones at the local Gazette about printing the story but she tells him he is a parasite who makes money off of the bereaved and she has every right to let people know about him. He leaves and he sees that another funeral is taking place.He sees Lucy in one of the cars crying. As he walks off down the street he is shocked to see Ray running towards him.
But not in human form. Ray is now dead. His spirit runs straight into him.
Ray is panicking and can't understand how he's died so young and fit. He tells Frank that just before he died he felt his heart been crushed while he was working out. Frank tries to explain the rules of the afterlife to him.
Ray asks Frank to give him a ride to his funeral. (Director's cut) As Frank pulls up to the graveyard in his car, Ray (not yet used to being a spirit) has trouble grabbing hold of the door handle to get out. Frank pushes him through the car door and he lands on the ground.
They walk through the graveyard and Ray is petrified as he witnesses many spirits roaming the grounds. Drill Sergeant Hiles (R.Lee Ermey), the watchful spirit of the other ghosts, walks out of his tomb and orders the ghosts to get back in their graves. Frank knows there will be trouble.
He tells Ray to go on ahead while he talks to the angry sergeant. The two have a fight but with Hiles's supernatural abilities, Frank has no chance.While Hiles shouts to tell the inhbitants of the graveyard who's in charge, Frank goes off to join Ray at his funeral. As Ray becomes very emotional at his tragic death, he falls into the grave as he tries to put his arms around Lucy.
He is horrified as he lays on top of his own corpse. As the mourners start to leave the graveside,sheriff Walt Perry (Troy Evans) arrives to talk to Frank. Apart from Lucy, he was the last person to see Ray alive and he wants to know what condition he seemed to be in when he saw him.
He says that the FBI are becoming very concerned about the amount of deaths that are happening in the town - many of the victims are healthy and have clean arteries when the autopsy has taken place but their hearts look as though they have been squeezed. Frank tries to get rid of Walt by pretending that he wants to pay his respects to Ray, in order to pull Ray's spirit out of his grave. Walt is alarmed to see Frank physically grappling with thin air and seemingly talking to nothing.
As Frank and Ray get ready to leave, an emotional Lucy approaches and tells Frank that she believes in his paranormal gifts. He tells her that he has in fact communicated with Ray. Frank has dinner with Lucy and the deceased Ray at the Excalibur themed restaurant and acts as a communicator between the two of them.
But Ray becomes increasingly frustrated as his wife seems to start bonding with Frank throughout the evening. She asks him why he can see spirits and Frank tells her that he was in a car accident five years earlier and sometimes a traumatic experience can alter a person's perception. Lucy opens up too.
She tells Frank that her and Ray's marriage was not a happy one and just as Frank tries to console her by grabbing her hand, Ray angrily knocks over a glass of wine into Frank's lap. Thrilled that he can now use make physical contact with the real world, Ray threatens Frank and disappears. Frank goes to the bathroom to dry his trousers.
A man enters and Frank is shocked to once again see a glowing number on the man's head reading 38. Frank becomes increasingly edgy as he sees The Grim Reaper figure appear and kill the man by reaching into his chest and squeezing his heart. The man's corpse drops to the floor and Frank watches as the gateway to Heaven opens up and the man's spirit goes off to the other side.
Frank rushes out of the restaurant and pursues The Reaper. Lucy is escorted to the Sheriff's office by one of Sheriff Perry's deputies as a witness to the situation. Walt is told that witnesses saw Frank rushing out of the restaurant before the dead man was found.
He tells his men to bring Frank in. Frank chases the Reaper in his car with Stuart, Cyrus and The Judge. He tries his best to kill it but his car just goes straight through the caped figure and it once again eludes him.
FBI agent Milton Dammers (Jeffrey Combs) arrives at the Sheriff's office to meet Walt and Lucy. He believes that Frank is behind the killings. He tells them about the incident that happened five years earlier when Frank and his wife had the car crash.
They discovered that Debra's dead body was found 15 yards from the car with a number 13 carved in her forehead and after the body was found, Frank was picked up wandering the forest claiming to have no recollection of the incident. Frank tracks down The Reaper at the museum where the 39th life has been taken. Frank sees on Magda Reese-Jones's forehead a number 40 glowing.
She is going to be the next target. He tries to warn her but two deputy sheriffs arrive to arrest him. The Reaper appears but the officers have their guns pointed at Frank.
The Judge appears and shoots The Reaper and it disappears. Cyrus and Stuart start to make people scared in the museum in order to cause a diversion for Frank to get away. In the commotion, Frank punches Magda and knocks her out, in order to carry her out to his car to safety.
He drives away but The Reaper is in pursuit and forces Frank to crash his car in the vicinity where Debra died years earlier. Magda crawls from the car trying to escape from Frank who she believes to be psychotic. Frank tries to get her to listen to him but he is dazed and confused as the Reaper plunges towards her and crushes her heart.
Frank jumps towards it but it disappears again and he is lying face down on her corpse. The gateway to Heaven opens and Magda's spirit jumps from her body and accuses of Frank of being a sick murderer who is responsible for her and his wife's death. Frank arrives at the sheriff's office and tells them what has happened.
When Walt asks him if he had anything to do with Magda's death, he doesn't answer and he is arrested on suspicion of murder. Lucy doesn't believe it and storms out as Frank is taken through to the interrogation room followed by Dammers. (Director's cut) Lucy goes out to her car and sits inside trying to get her head around things.
Ray appears on the back seat - his spirit now decaying from dripping ectoplasm. Dammers and Walt are sat in the interrogation room with Frank who looks demoralized. Dammers calls him a dangerous man but Walt refuses to believe that Frank is behind the murders.
Dammers uses his power of authority to tell Walt to get out of the room while he questions Frank. Frank tells Dammers that he is not a murderer and that he can communicate with the other side. He has seen the figure of Death killing people by reaching into their chests but Dammers doesn't believe any of it and believes Frank to be responsible for the crimes.
(Director's cut) Cyrus and Stuart walk into the sheriff's and start to walk through the walls of the cells to find Frank. They eventually get to his cell and try to talk to him but Frank is silent. Cyrus tells Stuart that he can't even see them anymore.
He's so traumatised he's stopped believing. Dammers looks through the narrow opening of the prison door observing Frank. He tells the deputy that he doesn't even expect him to make it until the trial.
He's expecting him to commit suicide. Lucy goes to Frank's house to see if she can find any evidence to clear his name. As she wanders around, Ray is looking too.
(Director's cut) Ray sees on the fridge some labels describing the layout of his and Lucy's house. He realises that Frank was using his psychic abilities to con them. One of the sticky labels gets stuck to his fingers.He tries to shake it off and as he does, Lucy sees it floating towards the back garden in the wind.
She walks outside and sees a nice looking garden, which Frank has made in memory of his wife in place of the basketball court. The phone rings and the answering machine picks up the message. It's Old Mrs.Bradley trying to tell Frank about her fears for her daughter Patricia.
Lucy believes the mother to be dangerous and after hearing her message, heads over to their house. She hides in the bushes outside as the old lady walks out to get rid of the garbage bags. She sneaks inside, looking for Patricia.
Ray walks to the house and because of his abilities the house transforms into a weird shape from his point of view. He can sense there is danger lurking inside. Patricia is at the top of the stairs and tells Lucy they need to hide.
As her mother walks back in, the two of them rush into her bedroom. Lucy tells Patricia that she needs to get away and start a new life for herself. She sees an urn on the side.
They are Patricia's father's ashes. He had killed himself after discovering that Patricia had been involved with a serial killer. She hears her mum coming up the stairs and tells Lucy to hide in the wardrobe.
She just gets inside as her mother enters. Patricia offers to make her a cup of tea and they walk out. Lucy finds a Stanley knife in the wardrobe with the initials F.B.
She realises that it's Frank's that Dammers had told her had gone missing after Debra's death. Lucy slowly walks down the stairs to sneak out. The Urn starts to glow and a figure appears in the wall behind Lucy trying to sneak up.
Lucy, oblivious to the threat, rushes out of the house as Ray walks in to try and protect her. His face is sliced off by the figure's hand and as Lucy gets into her car, Ray's deformed spirit is tossed onto the hood of the car. Lucy goes to see Frank in his cell and tells him that Old Mrs.
Bradley must be responsible for Debra's death. She's found his knife in her bedroom and she's crazy enough to do something like that. Frank is still in a quiet, depressed state.
He hugs Lucy and he sees Cyrus and Stuart enter the room. But as he looks Lucy in the face, the number 41 glows on her forehead. He realises she is the next victim.
The Reaper appears through the cell door and tries to kill her. With the help of Stuart and Cyrus, he tries to protect her in the confines of the cell. Lucy shouts for the deputy to come and unlock the door.
Stuart is dissolved by the Reaper's sythe. As Frank hears the cell door unlock, he kicks the door into the deputy's head and knocks him out, so that he can escape with Lucy. Dammers walks around the corner and draws his gun.
Lucy rushes up to him and tells him that Frank is crazy, as Cyrus battles the Reaper. Lucy uses a fire extinguisher to spray at Dammers to protect Frank. Cyrus's soul is taken by the Reaper and Frank takes Dammers's gun and runs out of the precinct with Lucy.
He tells her that he must kill himself in order to become a spirit and protect her. He is ready to put a bullet in his head, but she tells him not to and instead helps him have a near death experience by means of hypothermia and using barbiturates to slow his heart rate. At the medical centre, Frank goes to sit in the cryogenics room and waits to slowly die as Lucy gets the equipment prepared to revive him within several minutes.
But Dammers appears in the room armed with an uzi machine gun. He thinks Frank deserves to die for his supposed crimes and abducts Lucy to stop her from reviving him. Frank's spirit emerges from his dead body and the gateway to Heaven opens for him but he walks away to try and find Lucy.
Dammers handcuffs Lucy in the back of one of the sheriff's cars and drives off. Frank pursues them. As he tries to get used to his abilities, he sees he Reaper rapidly jumping and flying through the town to try and approach Lucy in the car.
Just as the Reaper launches onto the roof of the car, Frank flies down and knocks it onto the road. A car zooms down the road and crashes into Frank and smashes him into tiny pieces of ectoplasm. The Reaper approaches him with his scythe as Frank's spirit moulds back together.
A truck approaches and rams straight into the Reaper and it is taken down the road clinging onto the front of the vehicle. Dammers takes Lucy to the graveyard and parks the car up. She desperately wants to get back to the medical centre to revive Frank's body but he tells her that he is not going to return her for several hours until there's no chance of Frank coming back.
She shouts at him and he starts to freak out again. (Director's cut) As he tries to cover his ears with his hands, Lucy notices one of his wrists the swastika sign. He tells her that he was undercover with the Manson family for six months disguised as a hippy and he was used as the family's sex slave.
He gets out of the car and walks several yards away and stands in front of the car breathing nervously and uncontrollably. He opens up his shirt and reveals his deeply scarred body. (Director's cut) He starts to reveal to her his experiences in the many bizarre undercover assignments over the years that he has been part of.
All of the weird cults and sects he has had to be involved in, including drinking goat's blood. He says that he has suffered for his country. He says that the pain he has suffered in the different religious groups has its rewards and tries to prove that he has some psychic sensibilities.
He and Lucy are both shocked as the car engine starts up. The gear stick and steering wheel move and Lucy knows that it's Frank. Frank starts to reverse the car away from Dammers as Dammers chases after it.
Sergeant Hiles reaches in through the car window to grab Frank and throws him to the ground. The car crashes into a sarcophagus and coffins fall out. The Reaper approaches and slices Hiles in half with its scythe.
Frank uses the sergeant's machine guns to shoot it. Lucy gets out of the car to get into the driver's seat and Dammers jumps out to grab her.She uses the skull from a skeleton to hit him and quickly gets in the car and drives off. While Dammers chases after her, Frank rips the Reaper apart with the bullets and turns it into pieces ectoplasm.
He grabs the face of the Reaper and as he slams it down onto a grave a few times, the face gradually morphs into a human face and reveals itself to be Johnny Bartlett. He has returned from beyond the grave to continue his killing spree. Spirits start wandering around in the vicinity, all of who appear to be Johnny's victims satisfied that their deaths have been avenged.
A spirit with the number 1 carved in his head approaches Frank and tells him he was a doctor and the first of the victims. He thanks Frank for what he's done. But while Frank is distracted, the pieces of Johnny's ectoplasm start to drip down into a tomb and gradually morph back together.
Frank dives down into the ground and wrestles with him. He picks up the scythe and as he brings down the handle onto the ectoplasmic figure, Johnny's full human formed spirit is revealed. Frank is just about to destroy him with the scythe but Lucy revives his body with chest plates.
He wakes up panting for breath. He tells her that Johnny's back and that she needs to go and get Patricia out of the house and save her from him. Lucy arrives at the house but her mother tells her that there's no way her daughter is going anywhere.
Lucy confronts her about Frank's knife in her closet and the old lady angrily storms off upstairs. Patricia runs up after her. Lucy waits in the living room and moments later, Patricia comes back down and says that her mother is going with them.
Lucy tells Patricia that Johnny's ghost has returned and is on the loose. She tells Lucy she knows and that his spirit often visits her. As Lucy stands in the doorway of the living room, Johnny appears behind her threatening to kill her.
He says that she and Frank have been causing a lot of problems. Patricia goes to the kitchen and Johnny points to the knives on the wall. He wants to watch her kill Lucy.
(Director's cut) Patricia repeatedly stabs the knife through Johnny's torso as they both laugh and become increasingly excited by it, almost in an arousing way. Lucy goes upstairs to see if Mrs Bradley is going with them. She sees her bedroom door open a jar and when she opens it she is horrified to see the old lady's dead body spread out on the bed covered in blood.
Patricia pops up behind her and tries to stab her. Lucy tries to shut the door and the blade of the knife goes into it. Lucy punches her and they both grapple to the floor.
Lucy gets up and runs out of the door, after she gets the key out of the lock and locks it from the outside. She sits on the landing stairs trying to get over the shock but bullets start exploding through the door. Patricia has got hold of her mother's pump action shotgun.
Lucy tries to run down the stairs but Johnny's figure appears from under he rug and tries to strangle her. Frank arrives in time to save Lucy. He grabs hold of the rug and throws Johnny off of the landing.
Patricia gets out of the bedroom firing at them maniacally. Frank and Lucy get into Patricia's bedroom and Johnny appears in the room through the portrait of her father. He tries to kill Lucy once again but Frank smashes the portrait onto the bed post and Johnny's spirit cries out as he is sucked into the urn on the bedside table.
Frank puts the lid on and sees Johnny's name on the urn. He tells Lucy that they need to get to a chapel and get the ashes to the "other side". Realising that there's a chapel in the old psychiatric (now derelict) hospital, which is located just behind the Bradley house, the pair head off there on foot.
They make their way into the murky looking building and walk through the hallways looking for the chapel. Patricia follows them armed. As Frank looks around, he starts to have psychic episodes where he is able to see the events that transpired on the fateful day when Johnny and Patricia went on their killing spree.
He sees Johnny pushing a trolley around and he uncovers a gun and blows away the doctor who thanked Frank in the graveyard. He sees the teenage Patricia walking around with a knife ready to carve into the victims' foreheads. Through his flashbacks, Frank hears one of the doctors say that the chapel is on the fourth floor.
Still believing Frank to be the murderer, Dammers enters the hospital. Frank and Lucy are forced to split up when Patricia appears in the hallways and starts shooting at them both again. Lucy has the urn but Dammers gets hold of her and throws her head into the wall.
Lucy punches him and gets away from him and manages to get into the elevator before he can reach her. She starts going up to the fourth floor but it breaks down. Frank is still running upstairs and comes across the chapel.
He hears Lucy cry. He tries to pry the elevator door open to no avail but she manages to pass him the urn through the door to take to the chapel. Frank puts the urn down to smash the door in but as he turns around he bumps into a statue of the Virgin Mary and it falls onto the table and sends the urn flying to the other side of the hall.
Dammers catches it. Frank angrily and desperately asks for it back but Dammers opens it and releases Johnny's ashes. His spirit laughs as the dust breezes away.
Frank picks up a metal bar ready to give Dammers a beating but Dammers pulls out a machine gun and shoots him in the arm. Facing away from him and holding his bloody arm, Frank sees Patricia walk around the corner in the distance ready to shoot him with the shotgun. Dammers orders him to turn around.
Frank does and falls backwards as Patricia fires and the bullet blows Dammers's head off. Frank crashes through four wooden floors down onto the ground floor. Patricia starts to shoot at Lucy in the elevator.
She avoids the bullets,and the elevator starts automatically going again. Bloodied, bruised and half unconscious, Frank starts to crawl along the floor of the vivisection room. (Director's cut) In his psychic flashbacks, Frank sees Johnny chasing the teenage Patricia around dead bodies as she screams "please don't hurt me".
As they have a playful game of chase, covered in blood. He grabs her and they start making out on the coroner's trolley. Lucy makes it to the ground floor and rushes to Frank.
But Frank is nearly unconscious. Patricia appears behind her and hits her over the head with the butt of the gun. Frank flashes back to the moment when his wife Debra died and he finally remembers exactly what happened in that moment.
He sees The Reaper transform into Johnny as he's stood over his wife's body and Patricia is holding his Stanley knife. Patricia points the shotgun at Frank, ready to kill him but she is out of bullets. She kicks him and lifts him up off of the floor with the gun around his neck.
Lucy tries to help but Johnny is pinning her down. Frank struggles with Patricia but Patricia has the advantage and she strangles him to death. Frank's dead body drops to the floor, as Lucy cries out.
Johnny excitedly waits for Patricia to take Lucy's life as well. She picks up an axe from the vivisection area ready but Frank's spirit jumps out at her and rips Patricia's spirit from her body and takes her through the tunnel to the "other side". Johnny chases him up through the tunnel of light, and as they get half way through, he manages to pull her away from Frank's grasp.
Frank carries on floating towards Heaven, as Johnny and Patricia stay hovering in the middle of the tunnel. He shouts to Frank that they're returning to Earth to get some more victims. Frank is just about to leap down after them but a voice stops him.
It's Cyrus with Stuart. Frank looks down at Johnny and Patricia as their laughing turns to fear and panic. The spiritual looking, electric like portal gradually turns into the inside of a huge worm, with dozens and dozens of smaller worms wrapping themselves around them,strangling them and gouging out their eyes.
The huge worm swallows them up and takes them down into the burning flames of Hell. Frank watches in disbelief and turns around to have a look around Heaven. Cyrus and Stuart tell him that it's really something.
Frank sees his wife Debra approach him smiling. She tells him it's time to go home. The higher powers have said that it's not his time to die yet.
Cyrus pushes him and he starts to float along the clouds. He wakes up in the derelict hospital in Lucy's arms. He demolishes his old house in order to start a new life with Lucy.
Walt pulls up and tells Frank that the investigation is over. They found a stash of Ouija boards at the house and Patricia was using them to bring Johnny back from the dead. Her mother was trying to do her best to keep her sedated but there was no chance of her stopping Johnny.
As Walt gets into his car and drives off, Frank sees the ghost of Dammers in the back seat. To his surprise Lucy can see him as well. She says to Frank "sometimes when you've had a traumatic experience it can alter your perception".
Then Lucy uses a blanket to imitate the Reaper and laughingly chases Frank as the movie ends..