A “dream team” of paranormal experts unites to solve the ghostly mystery at an isolated New Orleans estate in Haunted Mansion, Disney’s second attempt to turn their amusement park ride into a film franchise after a 2003 version with Eddie Murphy, which opens in Prague cinemas and worldwide this weekend.
With a game cast, atmospheric set design, and slick direction courtesy of Justin Simien (Dear White People), Haunted Mansion feels primed to offer plenty of ghoulish fun but falls well short on both horror and comedy fronts. Any improvements over the previous movie are so ephemeral you’d need a EMF meter to detect them.
Written by Katie Dippold (2016’s Ghostbusters), Haunted Mansion stars LaKieth Stanfield as a Ben Matthias, an astrophysicist who once invented a spectral lens that can purportedly capture ghosts on film… but has become an alcoholic ghost tour guide who doesn’t even believe in the paranormal after the death of his wife.
But opportunity comes knocking for Ben in the form of ragged Father Kent (Owen Wilson), who promises him the chance to become a hero, or at least make a cool two grand, by trotting his phantasmal camera out to an isolated manor currently inhabited by single mother Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase Dillon).
Not willingly inhabited, mind you: the ghosts of the titular Haunted Mansion follow any one who enters the place after they leave, so Gabbie, Travis, Father Kent and now Ben are essentially trapped there or forever haunted until they can solve the mystery behind their new spiritual companions. To help do so, they recruit historian Bruce (Danny DeVito) and medium Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), who invokes the spirit of centuries-old psychic Madame Leota (Jamie Lee Curtis, whose appearance is brief and largely limited to a head floating inside a crystal ball).
Stanfield gives a sensitive performance as Haunted Mansion‘s closest thing to a lead character, but his low-key work is out of sync with this otherwise broad comedy. DeVito, Haddish, and Wilson are all playing variations on the same comic relief character, meanwhile, without much to work with.
Wilson is especially fun as the purported exorcist, but his presence here leaves one pining for the 1999 remake of The Haunting. That film, despite its other flaws, at least believed in its core premise while still affording its star some humor on the side.
Haunted Mansion, meanwhile, treats all the ghostly goings-on as a big joke, and doesn’t even attempt to offer anything resembling a scare. This is the same brand of family-friendly entertainment as the 2003 movie, and despite some terrific creature design that includes an unrecognizable Jared Leto as big baddie Alastair Crump, all the ever-present ghosts are never anything movie than a Halloween decoration.
This Haunted Mansion spends so much time on its plodding Scooby-Doo mystery and backstory that the laughs are few and far between, as well. A police sketch artist scene and a ghost tour led by Winona Ryder are among the film’s fleeting chuckles.
Disney has been trying to recapture the magic of the original Pirates of the Caribbean for the past two decades, but doesn’t seem to understand what made that film fun: it was a genuine swashbuckling pirate movie in the mold of the Errol Flynn classics that had conviction to become an grand cinematic adventure far beyond its amusement park origins.
2023’s Haunted Mansion, meanwhile, has all of the fun props and sets and specters directly from or inspired by the Disneyland ride, but lacks the storytelling vision to adapt these 50-year-old stereotypes into a compelling movie. If going through the Haunted Mansion ride on repeat for two hours sounds like your idea of fun, you may find a lot to like here. Others beware.
