Haunted Mansion Review: Disney's Big Theme Park Adaptation Is A Surprisingly Creepy Affair
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being reviewed here wouldn't exist.
That a movie about a haunted mansion, literally titled "Haunted Mansion," manages to be creepy should not be surprising. Considering what the title portends, such a movie ought to be creepy. But for a Disney movie in the year of Our Lord 2023 to be creepy seems kind of unexpected. Though Disney has long since embarked into the world of PG-13 movies — starting in earnest with their 2003 smash hit "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" — they've largely backed away in the last few years from doing anything that might put a scare in kids. If you have a long enough memory, you'll recall that 2003 marked the year when the studio released another cinematic take on the Haunted Mansion, the ride that's been entertaining and playfully scaring audiences at Disney theme parks for decades. That Eddie Murphy-starring vehicle was (and remains) a limp and bland film. So the bar for the new "Haunted Mansion" is low, but thanks to some inventive riffs on the seminal attraction and a committed ensemble, this movie ends up being surprisingly enjoyable and more than a little unnerving.
LaKeith Stanfield stars as Ben, an astrophysicist who made a name for himself by creating a high-powered camera that potentially could capture otherworldly specters, like ghosts. After the unexpected death of his wife, Ben became even more of a hermit and is all but dragged into action when called upon by the folksy Father Kent (Owen Wilson), who's been hired to perform an exorcism on an old Louisiana mansion whose current residents, a single mother and her son (Rosario Dawson and Chase W. Dillon), say is particularly rife with the undead. Ben and Father Kent soon realize that the mansion is indeed haunted, and recruit a psychic (Tiffany Haddish) and an elderly historian (Danny DeVito) to help rid the mansion of its undead guests once and for all.
Director Justin Simien and writer Katie Dippold don't waste much time in leaning into the eponymous house being littered with ghosts — the pre-title sequence features the mother and son exploring the house, realizing there are ghosts aplenty, and trying in vain to get out before it's too late. If you're familiar with the theme-park attraction, you'll spot an immense amount of references to the Disneyland and Walt Disney World rides, from punny tombstones to killer undead brides to the portentous head-in-a-crystal-ball Madame Leota (Jamie Lee Curtis). Simien and Dippold largely land on the right side of balancing these nudges and nods without allowing those to so obnoxiously dominate the proceedings as to alienate anyone without Disney awareness. And Simien crafts some decently scary setpieces, from the skeptical Ben's first nautical encounter with a ghost to a séance gone wrong.
Balancing laughs and scares
Where "Haunted Mansion" stumbles is less in balancing how much people with or without theme-park awareness can get what's going on, but in shifting between the comic and the creepy. The underlying theme of the film is grief — Ben's initial doubt towards there being ghosts in the mansion, let alone anywhere, derives from the pain he feels regarding the loss of his wife and the fact that he hasn't made contact with her beyond the grave — and the script as well as Stanfield's performance lean in heavily to bringing that to life. (You hopefully don't need a reminder that LaKeith Stanfield is immensely talented, but when he goes for the emotions here, he reminds you often that he's a fiercely committed performer.) But leaning into scares and emotion are far more effective than in bits where the movie tries to nod towards the comic aspects of the Haunted Mansion attraction, and one tangent into a different opulent manor featuring cameos from Winona Ryder and Daniel Levy is more head-scratching than hilarious.
Most of the ensemble, at least, is up for the challenge. Wilson and Haddish do very well on their own in bringing a comic bent to their character arcs (and DeVito is funny, though in far less of the film than he should be). As one of the more iconic aspects of the attraction, Curtis does well by the character of Madame Leota, in spite of adopting a vaguely Eastern European accent that doesn't really line up with the stentorian tones of the actress who originated the role at the parks. The one sore thumb in the cast, playing the cult favorite character the Hatbox Ghost, is Jared Leto. The Hatbox Ghost is (for reasons best left unspoiled) a crucial part of this film, and so Leto does have a fair bit of screen time. It's more accurate to say that a heavily CGI-ed version of Jared Leto has a fair bit of screen time; aside from a brief stylized flashback and Leto's name in the opening credits, you would have a hard time pinpointing the Oscar winner in the role, making it all the more confusing that he was cast as the character, as opposed to ... well, just about anyone else.
These nagging issues aside, "Haunted Mansion" is a lot better than the half-hearted marketing surrounding the film would suggest. (The timing of the SAG-AFTRA strike lined up perfectly enough with this film's Disneyland premiere, making it so the actors didn't show up on the red carpet, replaced instead by Disneyland Cast Members playing characters like Cruella De Vil.) The quirky ensemble, anchored by a solid starring performance from LaKeith Stanfield, is aided by Justin Simien's effective direction. Though this film is perhaps not as surefooted a theme-park adaptation as the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" was, it washes away any memory of the more family-friendly take from two decades ago. This "Haunted Mansion" has a lot more bite than you might think.
/Film Rating: 7 out of 10