Haunted Mansion
Disney’s Haunted Mansion is now a part of the company’s spooky canon with three film adaptations. It follows the 2003 Eddie Murphy-starring nostalgic ride, and this year’s Muppets edition. Justin Simien (“Dear White People,” “Bad Hair”) directs the Black led live action iteration of the story.
Simple plot leads to simple execution all around. Single mother Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) has moved into an antique house with her nine-year-old son Travis (Chase Dillon) but shortly after they step inside, they realize that it’s also occupied by some spirits. Teaming up with astrophysicist in mourning Ben (LaKeith Stanfield), priest Father Kent (Owen Wilson), medium Harriet (Tiffany Haddish) and haunted house expert Professor Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito), the gang hopes to combine their wits and rid the abode of its supernatural tormentors.
At best, “Haunted Mansion” is star studded but shoddy. The script’s punchlines are forced and flat, despite being written by Katie Dippold (“The Heat” “Parks and Recreation”). Everyone gets their fair share of one liners, but Wilson and Haddish carry most of them. While Wilson often runs dry, Haddish delivers in her classic tone and cadence, doing flimsy jokes justice when she can. The script does toe Disney’s boundaries though, tossing in some light innuendos in a somewhat concerted effort to draw in more mature audiences.
Simien’s film does show its fun loving origins in how the house can transform into a surrealist landscape halls that never end, ceilings that extend into impossibility, gargoyles, hidden rooms; your ever so classic ghost inhabited portraits recall nostalgia for the film’s timeless Gothicism. There are a few playful chases and spooky sequences throughout “Haunted Mansion,” but they’re fleeting and soon bring us back to the film’s stuttering pace. It’s hard to find any true tension in “Haunted Mansion” until the climactic faceoff in the third act.
But perhaps the greatest letdown of Simien’s movie is how little the cast is given to work with. The ensemble is brimming with lively, prolific candidates, yet it hardly seems like they were taken into account during scriptwriting. Their talents are either underused or misdirected. Ben mourns his wife as a cornerstone of the story for Stanfield, who has shown emotional depth in past roles but every tearful moment feels soap opera, not out of sentimentality, but performance. There’s a sense of watered-down contrivance throughout this forced, postured will they won’t they between Stanfield and Dawson showcases that too. And while Wilson, DeVito and Haddish all have impeccable comedy backgrounds, few of their comedic efforts really land.
“Haunted Mansion” is constructed with all the familiar bricks of a Gothic tale down to grief being a theme that runs through most of it. There’s some thoughtful examination on how grief makes us vulnerable but also allows us to harness that love to connect with one another and appreciate our lives together. There’s also value for family audiences in that nostalgia tinged spookiness riding along the surface level, most kids can enjoy something about “Haunted Mansion.” But with repeated sourness in comedic efforts from the film and an ensemble tragically misused here, “Haunted Mansion” misses its chance at becoming a Halloween classic.
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