Well the cycle of ghostly horror is upon us, for good or bad, geeks. Now ol' FATHER GEEK here loves these movies, so I welcome flicks like the one Egon has brought to our attention today. His review is a tadbit over the top and is chocked full of spoilers, so beware...
Howdy Harry, it's Egon Spengler with a review of the new thriller FREQUENCY starring Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel. Checked it out last night at the first test screening and, in a word, this film is EXCELLENT, a warm-hearted father-son drama along the lines of FIELD OF DREAMS mixed in equal parts with a crime thriller akin to director Gregory Hoblit's earlier work (PRIMAL FEAR and FALLEN). A weird combination, agreed, but it works!
Because it is a smallish film (there are some cool visual effects but it's not a summer blockbuster kind of picture), I am guessing they will put it out sometime in the spring (also, IMDB lists it as a 2000 release). BEWARE there are a few SPOILERS ahead so don't read further if you don't want to know…I will not give away the ending, but in order to explain the plot, I do have to reveal a twist or two. I may not expose more than the commercials and trailer will, but you have been warned.
Quaid stars as Frank Sullivan, a New York fireman who is tragically killed trying to rescue a runaway girl in a warehouse fire in 1969. Thirty years later, his son John (played as an adult by Caviezel) has become a troubled, hard-drinking cop who still lives in the family home, while his mom, a nurse, has moved into her own place. His partner is an old friend of his father's named Satch (Andre Braugher, awesome as always in a detective role, the poor guy probably doesn't get offered much else). In the meantime we are introduced to the idea that the aurora borealis was particularly active the month that Frank was killed and now, exactly three decades later, is active again.
FATHER GEEK note: This review is spoiler rich from this point on... BEWARE...STOP READING NOW!
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One night John digs his dad's old ham radio out of a closet and starts goofing around with it. He eventually makes contact with another New York native and they begin chatting. It's not long before John realizes the atmospheric abnormalities are allowing him to talk to his own father thirty years in the past, just a day before his death. Frank becomes convinced of the truth when John tells him the result of the Mets' performance in the next day's World Series game.
After a cool montage sequence in which Frank is filled in on all the historical developments of thirty years (and the Mets scores), John is able to warn his dad to avoid taking the dangerous route out of the fire that got him killed, and Frank survives. In the future, John remembers both realities--his father dying tragically AND his father living until just a few years ago when he died of lung cancer. The film comes to the end of the first act with a sort of, "Well, this movie is over now, what's next?" feeling.
The twist comes when, back in 1969, John's mother/Frank's wife is murdered by a serial killer targeting nurses, which didn't happen before. Now John has grown up with a father but no mother! Again, he remembers both realities. Since the serial killer was never captured, John can only seek out the thirty-year-old files and tell his father to tail a woman who was murdered back in 1969. Although Frank is able to save her by just hanging around and keeping the killer away, he and John are no closer to figuring out who the guy is.
As Frank in the pastclose in on the murderer, the killer (in both times) starts to figure out that something weird is going on and strikes back, framing Frank for one of the slayings. At this point, the film gets faster-paced and a little more predictable, but by this point you're pretty engrossed in it and don't really care that you can see the end speeding toward you.
This is also where some of the cool effects kick in, especially a scene toward the end. As father and son wrestle with the killer in two different times, they can hear each other over the open-miked radios and the room around them starts to warp and morph furniture styles over and over again, because there are so many different outcomes unfolding each second. This scene had the audience clapping and cheering. So did a similar scene where Frank hides a wallet under the floorboards of the house as he talks to John on the radio, as Johngoes to the where his dad is hiding the wallet and retrieves it.
Expectations when seeing a film are one of the most important variables, and I have to admit that I had NO expectations one way or another going into FREQUENCY. I only knew basically what it was about. If I've raised your expectations too much by saying I loved this movie, maybe you won't react to it the same way I did. But I have to respect a movie that pulls off both heart-warming and scary…kind of the same way THE SIXTH SENSE did, though that film's darker portion was horror and this one's more a suspense thriller.
But in both THE SIXTH SENSE and FREQUENCY, a very delicate balancing act is pulled off and that's pretty rare. I think anybody--not just sci-fi/fantasy genre fans--are really going to dig this flick. It would make an excellent date movie, seriously, there were a lot of couples at the screening who seemed into it…the film got loud applause at the end. If I'm being more effusive with praise than I've been before, it's because this is the kind of small, really well-done movie that often just gets CRUSHED by some big overblown piece of drivel or the studio's inability to market it well. It deserves to succeed, and the fact that THE SIXTH SENSE, a similar film and equally well done, DID do well, gives me hope. Maybe they should market it the same way as THE SIXTH SENSE, focusing on the intriguing storyline and not so much on the actors in it, something which Bruce Willis may or may not have liked at first but I bet he ain't complaining now!
Other aspects of FREQUENCY that I thought worked were Quaid and Caviezel doing "New Yawk" accents and pretty much pulling them off and a lot of humorous touches (including a running joke about the web site Yahoo!). It will probably be one of the better films of next year and I've got my fingers crossed for it to do well. The 1969 Mets are an important part of the storyline (the flick has some nice "lost" footage of them sheepishly singing on TV that's pretty funny at the end). It's a shame they couldn't get this movie out earlier this monthto capitalize on the Mets nearly getting to the Series again, but who knew THAT was gonna happen?
