Haunted Mansion

The Plot: Mourning the loss of his wife, former astrophysicist turned New Orleans tour guide Ben (Lakeith Stanfield) is very much grounded in reality. The supernatural is not something he believes in… until now. Father Kent (Owen Wilson) approaches him to assist with an investigation into a reportedly haunted mansion, using Ben’s special camera to potentially capture the dead. New tenants Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her young son Travis (Chase Dillon) sense there’s definitely something going on in the house. They also draft in historian Bruce (Danny DeVito) and supposed medium Harriet (Tiffany Haddish) to take on this particular haunting…

The Verdict: If at first you don’t succeed in crawling out of the grave, try, try again. A certain pirate film proved that Disney could take a popular theme park ride and turn it into a money-spinning film franchise. However, the same couldn’t be said for the 2003 take on The Haunted Mansion, a limp and barely-remembered effort featuring Eddie Murphy in which the House Of Mouse tried going down the spooky but family-friendly route. They’re dipping back into the bloody well for Haunted Mansion, dropping ‘the’ and going full spook-tacular with updated visual effects. There’s also a more engaging storyline that recalls what haunted house films do well when they’re built around character development and a strong sense of venturing into the unknown – and all that creepily entails. It’s just a slight shame that it’s being released in the dog days of summer – it’s much more suited for a Hallowe’en slot.

The Haunted Mansion theme park ride itself is a relatively mild affair, but it’s a fun one for kids and adults alike. That seems to the template that writer Katie Dippold has worked upon, keeping her script light, funny but more cinematically spooky than its origins. This version isn’t as cuddly as it seems, pushing into a higher age rating to be edgier than its predecessor but keeps its head in the right hat box (as the chief villain of the piece comes to be known – the Hat Box Ghost, voiced by Jared Leto). The story spends a good bit of time hanging out with its human characters first, so that they can move beyond archetypes. That pays narrative dividends later on when each of them comes into their own in the ensuing spectral battle, even though some of them might be frauds out of their depth. Director Justin Simien plays around with the conventions of the haunted house film, giving in to obvious ones like banging doors and objects moving by themselves to trying out something different like capturing images of the dead souls (benign and malevolent) roaming the house.

Visually speaking, it’s a handsomely-mounted production that taps into the design of the ride but jazzes it up with eye-popping visual effects and lively performances from the cast that get into the, ahem, spirit of the piece. Though, some of it doesn’t quite convince like Jamie Lee Curtis’ disembodied floaty head in a crystal ball with effects enhancements that make her nearly unrecognisable. She’s more effective in her grand costume, having a ball with her heavily-accented Madame Leota in full pantomime mode. She’s having quite a few productive years recently – long may it continue. Leto fares less well, mostly reduced to deepened voice work when a bit more live action backstory on his ghoulish villain wouldn’t have gone amiss. Some of the jokes are misses, but there’s a higher hit rate that one might expect for a film that mixes the dark and the light to achieve some sort of balance between the two – not too kiddie, not too adult, just about right.

This version of Haunted Mansion doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is – a fun time at the movies, popcorn in lap, eyeballs entranced by the ghoulish goings on and ears out for the bumps in the night without it coming across as forced. It justifies its existence, lays its predecessor to rest in its tomb and comfortably crawls out of its grave to do The Monster Mash with gusto.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Review by Gareth O’Connor