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The ghosts and Ms. WitherspoonI see dead people -- all over the cineplex but mostly the tubeBy Todd Leopold  Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo star in "Just Like Heaven." ON CNN TV Watch "Showbiz Tonight" on CNN Headline News, weekdays at 7 p.m. ET.
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- This weekend, Reese Witherspoon stars as a disembodied spirit in "Just Like Heaven." She isn't alone. There seem to be lots of ghosts, spirits, unearthly travelers, occult visitors and just plain weird phenomena out there this fall. Some of it's in the movies; most of it's on television. Consider (as Salon's Heather Havrilesky did in a recent column The WB (like CNN, a division of Time Warner) has "Supernatural." CBS has "Ghost Whisperer" -- with Jennifer Love Hewitt as some kind of medium -- and "Threshold," starring an alien life-form up to no good. NBC has "Surface," which appears to be a malevolent reworking of the movie "The Abyss." And Fox has ... "American Idol." OK, so that one doesn't come on until spring. Still, there's enough of the paranormal out there to signify a trend. Havrilesky, among others, observes we're living in fearful times, therefore we get TV that focuses on anxiety over the Other -- whether the Other is an alien from outer space, a vampire/zombie/monster, a terrorist or a clever serial killer. I can't help but be reminded, however, of a "Twilight Zone" episode called "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," in which a group of friendly neighbors becomes a raging, paranoid mob after succumbing to the belief that there might be evil aliens among them. Naturally, the societal breakdown suits the real aliens just fine. They don't have to fire a ray gun; fear has done all the work. Eye on Entertainment looks over his shoulder. Eye-openerFortunately, the Witherspoon movie, "Just Like Heaven," is actually a romantic comedy. Witherspoon plays a workaholic doctor who gets into a car accident and is left in a coma. Mark Ruffalo plays a depressed widower who sublets Witherspoon's character's apartment -- only to find her spirit returning there, wondering who this strange man is messing up her coffee table. She can talk to him, he can talk to her, but nobody else can figure out what's going on. The plot then goes in the direction of dozens of films before it, from "Ghost" to "Heaven Can Wait" to "Topper" to "All of Me." Will Ruffalo's friends believe he's gone mad? Will Witherspoon's body revive? Will the two of them find true love -- together? Perhaps Jon Heder, Mr. "Napoleon Dynamite" II himself (Elvis Costello was, of course, the first Napoleon Dynamite), knows. He has a small part in the movie as a New Age bookstore clerk who seems to understand the relationship. He knows the truth: that girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. "Just Like Heaven" opens Friday. On screenOn the tubeSound wavesPaging readersVideo center
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): ABC has a revival of "The Night Stalker," the short-lived '70s Darren McGavin series based on one of the highest-rated TV movies of all time; and "Invasion," which is "War of the Worlds" writ small.
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