"Haunted Mansion" - Film Review
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Haunted Mansion wouldn't exist.
Foolish mortals…Disney has returned to the Haunted Mansion once again. All 999 happy haunts have taken up residence in Gracey Manor, just outside New Orleans. Also residing in this haunted house are Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son, Travis (Chase W. Dillon). They needed to move to make a new start and Gabbie found a great deal on the manor on Zillow. However, one night in the mansion shows them exactly why they were able to get the house for such a low price. Even if Gabbie and Travis leave, the ghosts follow. Gabbie calls on a ragtag team of New Orleans locals to exorcise the ghosts and make the mansion hospitable. Her hope of living peacefully in the home lies in the hands of a priest (Owen Wilson), a psychic (Tiffany Haddish), a history professor (Danny DeVito), and an ex-astrophysicist/current ghost tour guide (LaKeith Stanfield).
Unexpectedly, Haunted Mansion is about grief and its many different manifestations. Ben is struggling to find meaning in his life without his wife, and lives at the bottom of the bottle. Travis, too, feels unmoored by the loss of his father. They’re so filled to bursting with the pain of their losses that they don’t know how to make sense of the world of the living. What once brought them joy now brings them heartache. More than Haunted Mansion’s jokes, ghouls, and scares, the film is about the neverending process of grieving. There’s no simple answer to loss and it looks different for everyone. It’s the support found among friends, family, eccentric professors, mediums, etc. that eventually brings peace.
Photo Jalen Marlowe. © 2023 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The intended audience for Haunted Mansion is, obviously, the Disney crowd that tends to skew younger. Haunted Mansion could be a kid-safe entry point to the genre of horror because there aren’t any particularly gnarly scares, especially if children are familiar with the ride. But the real magic of Haunted Mansion is in the conversations it can start about young people and loss. It’s an impossibly thorny subject that everyone is terrified about getting right, so it’s nice to have a little help. Haunted Mansion believes that immortality does exist. Maybe people won’t walk out of the film convinced that there’s a spirit world, but they will be treated to a lovely, simple scene between Haddish and Stanfield about “ghost winks.” People we have lost still exist in some capacity. It may be in tater tots, train whistles, or memories about cheesesteaks, but that’s immortality.
Even though the film does speak to such a heavy topic, Haunted Mansion is smartly hilarious. The combination of DeVito, Haddish, and Wilson is so oddly perfect that an entire spin-off series could exist with the three of them as ghostbusters. Haunted Mansion does come deathly close to the two-hour mark and, by the end, the film feels overextended. Its inspiration is a nine-minute theme park ride, and almost all the set pieces from the ride are brought to life over the course of the film. Haunted Mansion built up enough good will through the middle section and with its absurdly charismatic cast of characters that one could almost let the lengthy run-time slide. The film drags its feet a little, but doesn’t really dig in and stick around too long to wreck its overall impact. There are confusing anachronisms in terms of the newly established lore for the ghosts, but again, it’s not enough to grind the film to a stop.
© 2023 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Also a little jarring are the unfortunate trappings of Haunted Mansion that exist because, at the end of the day, it’s a movie based on existing intellectual property. There’s a Marvel Monopoly game, a Black Panther action figure, and assorted Easter Eggs from the original attraction that are scattered about in the background, but they don’t stand out. Unfortunately, there’s also a detour to Burger King that’s awkwardly shoved into the scene when some of our main characters travel toward the final ghostly showdown. The rest of the expected nods and references don’t call attention to themselves and come with the territory. Whether or not the existence of the Easter Eggs is necessary is a conversation for another day and a hill Disney will likely die on, but there’s just no need for Father Kent to offer a jalapeño popper in these trying times.
Disney’s obsession with live-action remakes of its animated films has not won over any fans. Despite the fact that the Haunted Mansion ride is one of the most beloved attractions in the theme parks, this is the second time it has been adapted for the silver screen. That likely won’t encourage audiences with Disney fatigue to give Haunted Mansion a whirl. It will also be going up against two proven box-office juggernauts. That said, Haunted Mansion is the sort of family-fun flick that movie theatres have been missing.
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