Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion is a remake/reboot of the Eddie Murphy starring The Haunted Mansion from 2003, not forgetting that The Muppets paid a visit in 2021 on TV. And like those is based on the Disney theme park ride.

Plot wise there isn’t too much to ponder about. Mum Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and nine-year-old son Travis (Chase Dillon) have moved into a large mansion in New Orleans. They are barely there two minutes before the ghosts’ manifest and they are on their way out. Only to find that wherever they go the spooks are with them, forcing a return to the mansion.

This time however they are better prepared calling on the talents of priest father Kent (Owen Wilson), astrophysicist Ben (LaKeith Stanfield), medium Harriet (Tiffany Haddish) and Professor of all things haunted Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito) to exorcise the ghosts and find out why there are so many. What they uncover is a centuries old curse, lots of ghosts and great big-bad that needs them to get out of his trapped surroundings.

Directed by Justin Simien written by Katie Dippold Haunted Mansion ticks the required boxes of comedy, grief, evil, ghosts, hidden passages and rooms etc in a spectacularly shallow way. And I do mean spectacular because credit where credit is due the effects are pretty good.

The weakness is that the threadbare plot barely has anything to hold it together and as good as the individual cast performances are, collectively there’s little of no cohesion. They brought to mind Catherine Wheels each spinning off without due regard for what was around them. Similarly, during more sensitive moments when Travis and Ben are sharing their grief there’s no empathy generated by or for them.

Whether one thinks this is lazy thinking and filmmaking because it’s based on a popular ride and a twenty-year-old film based on that is neither here nor there. Some imagination is required to create these films.

And there have been successes with the first Pirates of the Caribbean film and the more recent Jungle Cruise. The latter in particular shows what a (mostly) good cast can achieve with the right rapport, that then generates fun for the audience to then enjoy.

Haunted Mansion lacks any real rapport between its cast, isn’t that spooky and is not that much fun.

Haunted Mansion opens in UK cinemas on 11 August 2023.