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American studio executives are terrified of the vast teen cinema-going audience and what they perceive as their demands. In an industry shot through with uncertainty (as screenwriter William Goldman once said, "nobody knows anything"), a supernatural thriller with big-blast effects which turns a buck means that effects become the order of the day.
"The Sixth Sense", where the effects were properly glued to all the other elements, broke the mould, and was followed recently by the equally excellent "Stir of Echoes". How "The Sixth Sense" got made without the usual tiresome visual blitzkrieg is anyone's guess. Perhaps the producer lied and told the studio the film would be a bog-standard fireworks display.
Now, complete with its own weird sensibility, comes "Frequency" in which, due to quirky solar conditions, a young policeman in 1999 is able to talk to his father (on his dad's old CB radio) just before he died in 1969. The two of them bond hugely and set out determinedly to change the past, with particular regard to the murder of the cop's mum.
The relationship between father and son (an amiable, heroic fireman and a morose cop) is thoughtfully drawn in, and both Dennis Quaid (as the dead dad) and Jim Caviezel (outstanding in "The Thin Red Line") supply all the necessary emotional shades with lots of conviction. Visually alive as well, it's a real shame that the film's originality doesn't extend to the serial-killer chunk, while the ending is a ludicrously sentimental (ie completely inappropriate) let-down. But for the most part, "Frequency" works, and works well.
