Directed By Justin Simien

Starring – Rosario Dawson, Lakeith Stanfield, Jamie Lee Curtis

The Plot – A single mom named Gabbie (Dawson) hires a tour guide (Stanfield), a psychic (Tiffany Haddish), a priest (Owen Wilson) and a historian (Danny Devito) to help exorcise her newly bought mansion after discovering it is inhabited by ghosts.

Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and scary action

(11) Haunted Mansion | Official Trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

History hasn’t been kind to films based on amusement park rides, but Simien’s incarnation of “Haunted Mansion” looks to change that with a rich combination of authenticity and heart that adds something integral to the engagement. On the former, this film is stuffed with Easter Eggs and fan service for anyone who loves the Disney park ride, from aspects and similarities from the ride itself, to even hidden Mickey’s being cleverly dispersed everywhere throughout the setting. Because this film and ride are both owned respectively by Disney, it allows them to indulge in the kind of shameless self-promotion that would typically sink the ambition of the films they adorn, and on tonal consistency alone, Simien understands what his audience of thrill-seekers pay to see. Speaking of tonal consistency, the film’s dependency for humor doesn’t always work out in a majority of positive returns, but the underlining heart dispersed from some of these emotionally reeling characters helps to supplant a sentimental edge to the storytelling that does bring forth some palpable vulnerability for its characters, in turn lending their talents to help override some of the limitations in characterization, which outline each of them as types instead of people. Having to fill the overwhelming shadow left by Eddie Murphy isn’t an easy task, but this star-studded ensemble involving Lakeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Danny Devito, Tiffany Haddish, and even Jamie Lee Curtis help to capably fill the void, cementing an abundance of charisma and endearing chemistry between each of their dynamics that was at the very least a pleasure to indulge in. For my money, Stanfield and Wilson take top honors, with the former conveying a lovable grouch beneath his suffering misery, and the latter, despite his limitations in material the longer the film persists, bouncing off of artificial properties with the kind of unshaken improvisation that feels like the twenty year evolution of his character in “Wedding Crashers”. However, if I’m being honest, it’s the talents of 13-year-old Chase Dillon that outshines them all, with a depth and dexterity for emotionality that not only feels rich with earned believability, but also empathetic for how his character responds to isolated loneliness that defines his everyday life. Finally, I would be doing a grave disservice if I didn’t credit the film’s production, primarily its darkly ominous titular setting for vividly bringing to life the atmospheric elements of the ride, to which it’s based on. While the film is blessed with colorfully cartoonish C.G that evokes an abundance of vibrant afterlife personalities, it’s really the gothic set decoration and weathered lighting schemes that naturally emit the foreboding frenzy, giving us plenty of internal beauty within a film that is quite literally surrounded by death. The house itself establishes its immensity in the many rooms, extending hallways and dark corridors that make up its bulk, and when combined with the freneticism of Jeffrey Waldron’s energetic movements of the lens in cinematography, fully immerses us in the paranormal pandamonium that persists under one roof.

NEGATIVES

If this film is plagued and ultimately defined by three elements, it’s overindulgence, convenience and product placement of the most forcefully unnecessary variety. The first is obviously realized repeatedly in the kind of heavy-handed exposition that is so on the nose, obvious, and so long-winded, that you could literally stop paying attention to the entirety of the film, and feel like you’re never falling behind with information. The script has so much information to unload, and yet never finds a naturally pleasing way of conveying it, other than to frequently halt the progression of the storytelling and corresponding narrative for an abundance of flashbacks about ghost personalities that hilariously dominate even the main characters that we’re forced to spend the entirety of the experience with. From there, the convenience sets in when you see how little of trouble any of these characters have in solving the many conflicts and puzzles that they become saddled with, frequently stumbling upon valuable information and insights into deceased characters that amazingly nobody in this world has stumbled across in over two hundred years that have passed since their death. On the subject of the product placement, I can often overlook this element because products are an influence of our life, so therefore they should be an element of this fictional world. However, the film literally halts everything at one point late in the second act to quite literally film a Burger King commercial, which not only has no frame of reference with anything pertaining to the film, but also goes nowhere with the remaining progression of the film. This isn’t the only example of it throughout the movie, just the worst example, and soon it becomes clear that Disney’s intent in this uninpsired incarnation was to sell advertisement time to attack their subconscious. I even feel myself wanting to buy a Mercedes Benz as I currently type this. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the film is too long at two hours, feeling like the first cut in a studio edit that still has a couple of more cuts to go before reaching a comfortable allowance. Part of my problem with the run time certainly pertains to the aforementioned dependency on backstory that the film is continuously shuffling into the forefront of the narrative, but in my opinion the bigger issue pertains to the predictability in the material itself, which not only resolved matters and revealed a twist in the exact manner that I was predicting as far back as being initially introduced to these characters, but also a doubling down in climax that fools the audience into thinking they’re nearly done with the film, until another half hour takes flight. Even the credits themselves can’t appropriately say goodbye to these characters, as it spends a couple more minutes watching them joke it up at an afterparty, to which by that point I abruptly got up and walked out of my theater. Boredom will inevitably set in for kids with this one, but for adults, we don’t even have the advantage of being able to soak up the subtleties in adult underlining comedic material, which are never even remotely testing of its PG-13 rating, which even an hour after seeing it doesn’t feel fittingly earned.

OVERALL
Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” is an improvement over the 2003 Eddie Murphy installment of the franchise, but not nearly funny or frightening enough to take up residence at for two hours of product placement and flashback slideshows that make up the entirety of its experience. With an underwhelming foundation plaguing its prominence, the talented tennants under this roof find themselves condemned by the ghosts of Disney’s past, which continue to confine its creatively bleak future.

My Grade: 5/10 or D+