Haunted Mansion
Disney’s reboot of its theme park franchise is a crushingly tedious spectacle of moving parts devoid of distinction, flair or laughs.
They have ghosts: Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, LaKeith Stanfield and Owen Wilson
The horror-comedy is a tricky genre to get right. There’s a danger of it either being too funny to frighten or too chilling to chuckle. There are exceptions – An American Werewolf in London, The Cabin in the Woods, Freaky, Violent Night – but too often the twain fails to meet. And Disney’s Haunted Mansion has another problem: the haunted house as a set-piece has been reproduced so many times that it would take the fevered imagination of a Tim Burton to breathe new life into it. As it is, Justin Simien's stab is a reboot of Rob Minkoff's The Haunted Mansion (2003), which itself was a cinematic embodiment of Disney’s theme ride of the same name. And the first film, which starred Eddie Murphy as a real estate agent, was pretty feeble, blighted by banal dialogue and a predominance of special effects.
Here, the mansion in question is in the Greek revival tradition and is set in deep Louisiana woodland, immediately lending an air of the Gothic. It is here that a widowed teacher, Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), and her nine-year-old son (Chase W. Dillon) improbably move, only to find the place teeming with spectral mischief makers. The catch is that once you cross the threshold, the ghosts latch onto you wheresoever you choose to flee. So Gabbie – who appears to be made of money – pays astrophysicist Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield) $2,000 to document her housemates with his self-invented quantum lens. A widower himself, and a died-in-the-wool sceptic, Ben snaps away dismissively, believing that he has made a pretty penny for a day’s work. Needless to say, the phantoms follow him back to his New Orleans apartment and only then unleash the full fury of their demonic powers. Thus, reinforcements are called for and a motley trio of suspect paranormal experts are enlisted to do battle, the better to spread the comic potential. Alas, neither Tiffany Haddish nor a hyperventilating Danny DeVito, or even Owen Wilson, are able to squeeze out a single laugh between them.
Thirteen years ago, none other than Guillermo del Toro was writing the script for Disney’s reboot and since then eleven more scenarists were called in to add their ink – to little avail. Del Toro’s script was deemed too scary, so the powers-that-be opted for an extravaganza of spectral clichés, from sudden apparitions, shifting perspectives, floating candlesticks and the deep disembodied vowels of Jared Leto. Unlike Eddie Murphy, that excellent actor LaKeith Stanfield plays the central role completely straight, as if he’d been hijacked from a better film. And little can Jamie Lee Curtis have thought that when she agreed to play a ghost trapped in a glass ball, that this would follow her Oscar in March. Such are the vicissitudes of the entertainment business.
Over-scripted, over-scored and over-blown, Haunted Mansion fails to chill, to amuse or to amaze, being a congested, lugubrious corporate shambles. With its budget of $150 million one could have financed fifty masterpieces rather than this mindless drivel. Even more dispiriting is the pre-emptive need to claw back that investment with brazen product placement, plugging the wares of everything from a famous fast-food chain to a multinational payment platform.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Chase W. Dillon, Dan Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jared Leto, Hasan Minhaj, Marilu Henner, Charity Jordan, Steve Zissis, Winona Ryder.
Dir Justin Simien, Pro Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich, Screenplay Katie Dippold (and many others, uncredited), Ph Jeffrey Waldron, Pro Des Darren Gilford, Ed Phillip J. Bartell, Music Kris Bowers, Costumes Jeffrey Kurland, Sound Al Nelson.
Walt Disney Pictures/Rideback-Walt Disney Studios.
122 mins. USA. 2023. US Rel: 28 July 2023. UK Rel: 11 August 2023. Cert. 12A.
