Horror month with my wife continues. In this movie, Actual Michael J. Fox plays a fake exorcist who actually works with actual ghosts to rustle up some cash, but then there’s a ghostly killer on the loose and he has to save Fake Andie MacDowell from getting killed by it, while Fake Jim Carrey plays a weird Nazi FBI Doctor and chases after them, and can they solve the mystery of what’s happening in time, and will doing so help Michael J. Fox put his own personal demons to rest and be happy again?

Spoilers

Yes and yes, but the trip along the way is frustrating af. Because the thing is, the movie’s fundamental story depends on the interplay between the ghostly world and the physical: How can ghosts interact with people, and how can physical world things interact with ghosts? This is so important that at one point Michael J. needs to pseudo-die in order to become a ghost, because he can’t do anything as a person.

But then the movie just plays fast and loose with the rules. Physical things can’t affect ghosts… except that they get hit by cars in ways that totally hurt them. And ghosts can’t affect the real world (there’s a slap that doesn’t land at one point and lots of ghost bullets that whiz through people ineffectually) except that they totally can (almost everywhere else in the movie). It’s just super-nonsensical.

It’s even more nonsensical because the villain seems to be this super-supernatural uber-spirit Reaper type thing, but then… it’s just Fake Gary Busey, normal-ass ghost of a serial killer, after all. Why was he so powerful? Because the plot said he had to be, I guess. And the thing that clues Michael J. Fox into the murders (glowing numbers on people’s forehead) isn’t explained at all — yes, Fake Gary Busey carves numbers into his victims’ foreheads, but why/how would his ghost put blazing numbers on their foreheads before he kills them while he’s not even in a room with them?

You could forgive the nonsense plot if the characters were great, but they’re not. Fox’s charisma is totally wasted here, as he plays a flat, mopey guy who just is sleepwalking through the movie. Fake Andie MacDowell has all the energy and naturalness of the real version (aka, very little), and Fake Jim Carrey brings a ton of super-weird energy to the movie, but none of it really belongs here or makes any sense or does anything other than to confuse and delay the plot.

This is the movie that Peter Jackson directed (and wrote, with Fran Walsh) right before the LOTR movies, and I cannot for the life of me imagine how any studio executive watched this and was like, yes, the guy who made this shitty, bad-effects, low-budget horror comedy that’s neither scary nor funny is definitely the guy to give $300 million and a valuable IP to. I mean, it worked out for them all, but what a leap of faith that had to have been.

PS Fake Jim Carrey is actually Jeffrey Combs. I was like “okay, but not the same guy as Weyoun/Brunt/Andorian-who-I-forget from Star Trek!” but it is him. I literally couldn’t recognize him at all despite him being one of my favorite actors from DS9. Acting! Genius!