Fairwater is the fictional New Zealand town where Frank Bannister lives in Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners.
Frank Bannister, played by Michael J. Fox, works as a fraudulent paranormal investigator. He and his ghost companions stage hauntings so that he can appear to remove them, but the scheme becomes dangerous when a supernatural killer begins targeting residents of Fairwater.
The town gives the film a contained setting that combines supernatural horror, comedy and detective-story elements. Although The Frighteners was filmed in New Zealand, Fairwater is an invented location rather than a real city such as Wellington or Christchurch.
The film was released in 1996 and was Jackson’s first major Hollywood production. Its setting is sometimes mistaken for a real New Zealand town because the movie uses recognizable local landscapes and production talent. Fairwater is the story’s fictional community, not the filming country’s capital.