The time: October 2013. The place: Anaheim, California. The people: my roommates and friends who were, like me at the time, Disneyland cast members, whose appointed backstage tour of one of the theme park’s most storied attractions, the Haunted Mansion, was delayed due to a necessitated clean-up of a loved one’s ashes a family thought would be appropriate to scatter throughout the ride— a more common occurrence at this particular spooky spot than you might think.
I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with this, except to say that there are likely many more tales from the Haunted Mansion out there— both real and fictional—that would have been more intriguing than director Justin Simien and screenwriter Katie Dippold’s Haunted Mansion, which offers little more than what its title promises. It’s a mansion. It’s haunted. Shrug.
Set in New Orleans, the titular mansion is a plantation home modeled after the ride as it is seen in Disneyland’s mini facsimile of the city, New Orleans Square, a portion of the park populated by restaurants and shops modeled after the city’s colorful architecture, where bands drift in and out playing live music. A note: the bloody history associated with a plantation—and Louisiana was a state where owning slaves was legal—is ickily skirted by a local historian played by Danny DeVito, who, in his quick rundown of the home’s backstory, notes that the house just sort of “appeared” in 1788, and that the land had “never been worked.” Like Disneyland’s New Orleans Square, the New Orleans we see in Haunted Mansion is a shadow of the real place, it’s history and culture barely represented beyond a surface level: the layered costumes of Tiffany Haddish’s psychic Harriet, and the few requisite location shots that are primarily there to announce that yes, we are in New Orleans.
I’ll admit that it isn’t really reasonable of me to expect that a Disney family movie based on a theme park ride that whizzes guests in buggies in and out of a home plagued with dancing ghosts, singing tombstones, a stretching room, and the spirit of an axe-wielding bride to possess the same amount of character as the location it is set in—one of the most haunted cities in the world, I should say—but it isn’t really as fun or spirited (pun intended) as the attraction is either. LaKeith Stanfield is Ben, a formerly bright astrophysicist who, after suffering a great loss, has turned to giving walking tours to tourists so disinterested and flat-out rude it’s a marvel the guaranteed one-star reviews haven’t driven him out of business already. And then he’s approached by Father Kent (Owen Wilson), a priest (?) who hires Ben on behalf of a single mother, Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase W. Dillon, mature beyond his years both in his old man chic costuming but also his expressive face and line readings) to use a camera Ben invented long ago that photographs dark matter to identify the ghosts haunting them in their new home. Now you may be asking, why don’t they just high-tail it out of there? The problem is, once a person steps foot inside the home, the spooks follow them wherever they go. So as soon as Ben walks inside, he doesn’t really have much choice but to help them solve the mystery— along with Kent, and Harriet, and DeVito’s Professor Davis, who all become stuck there too.
The characters all have a fun dynamic amongst each other, even if Stanfield is trying to give an actual performance while Wilson and DeVito offer unnecessary quips explaining what we can clearly see unfolding on screen. To the filmmakers’ credit that they do try to inject this thing with some heartfelt emotion, connecting the characters’ grief, regret, and desire to commune with their lost loved ones to the larger plot. It’s in the handling of the actual ghost story, which is overlong and struggles to conjure up some sort of intriguing mystery while shoehorning in all the notable characters from attraction, that the film begins to turn less into a purely creative venture and more into a lengthy Disney advertisement (that’s not to mention all the other product placement awkwardly, and even dementedly, shoved into this movie). And when the climax shifts gears into a chaotically ugly CGI ghost fest? Forget it.
Haunted Mansion is a PG-13 movie that is catered toward families and based on a family product, which also means it exists in that uneasy space between being too juvenile for adults, yet too mature for young children. Similar to the 2003 attempt at a Haunted Mansion film starring Eddie Murphy, it’s only mildly funny, and not particularly scary. Come October, Haunted Mansion is sure to play splendidly on Disney Plus, with just enough harmless spooky vibes to at least provide some atmosphere, if not entertainment (why this was dropped in theaters in the middle of July, I’ll never know). Ultimately, the most frightening thing in Haunted Mansion can be found in the string of words that unfurl across the screen in the opening credits: “Jared Leto as the Hatbox Ghost.”
Haunted Mansion is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 122 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Katie at the Movies 