Riot’s Reviews: Haunted Mansion
Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize! Since August 9th, 1961 guests at Disneyland Park have been happily enjoying the 999 spooks and spirits that “inhabit” the Haunted Mansion ride. The brilliant practical effects (combined with air conditioning and a seat to rest in for ten minutes) has been a consistent staple for every visit to the park since I was a child. That was even before Disney stepped things up during the holiday season and began changing the Mansion to aNightmare Before Christmas theme (which is arguably better than the original in my very biased opinion). In 2003, Disney took its first shot at bringing the ride to the silver screen with The Haunted Mansion, a comedy film helmed by Eddie Murphy that didn’t necessarily flop, but generally isn’t fondly remembered. Granted, it released a few months after the original Pirates of the Caribbean, so as far as Disney ride adaptations go, it was going to struggle mightily to do better than that. The almost irrational intent to remake all of their old content hasn’t served Disney well in the last few years. So how would this new iteration make viewers want to “hurry back?”
Haunted Mansion opens up in New Orleans, where we first meet Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield) who is working up the courage to talk to a girl. Ben, the fairly nihilistic astrophysicist is captivated by the outgoing and charming Alyssa (Charity Jordan), who is a tour guide for supernatural sites in the city. Fast forward a few years and Ben is passed out at a local bar, more hopeless than ever and now running the city tour. On another side of town, a young mother Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase Dillon) are setting up to move into the titular mansion, where they are immediately scared into abandoning the house by the “happy haunts” within. But all is not what is seems, as Ben is contacted by Father Kent (Owen Wilson) a priest who has been sent by the young family to figure out how to deal with their ghost problem. Standing at the threshold of the Mansion, Ben is warned that stepping in could change the course of his life forever, to which he scoffs at the notion and crosses the threshold. Too enticed with a big payday and after uncovering seemingly no evidence of spiritual forces, he returns home only to find something or someone has tagged along and his adventure with the Mansion has only just begun.
Much like my feelings after Dungeons and Dragons (seriously, you guys should see that movie), I was more than pleasantly surprised with this film. There is something to be said about having zero expectations and receiving an unexpected, enjoyable experience. Haunted Mansion did more than a few things right. They expanded on the original concept using direct characters and an endless (and I mean endless) amount of references and callbacks to the ride. They brought in a fantastic cast complete with a few legends like Danny DeVito and Jamie Lee Curtis. And thanks to adds like Tiffany Haddish (as the medium, Harriet) to highlight the comedy and Jared Leto (the hatbox ghost) to bring on the spooky, the performances were surprisingly well rounded.
While clearly relying on CGI for a lot of the effects, many of them were done in such a way that they didn’t feel much different than the practical ones that wow the visitors of the park every day. Outside of the climactic scenes that closed out the film, everything felt shockingly grounded and the story allowed for a lot more character development than I was expecting out of a remake. Haunted Mansion was one of those rare films where the predictability wasn’t a major detriment, specifically for the humor. Even though I knew most of the jokes were coming, I still laughed audibly at them. The minor plot holes were forgivable if only for the mere fact that the audience was having fun. Coupled with some of the most brilliant set designs I’ve seen in a while, all of the references back to the ride are going to thrill any longtime fan of the park.
For the most part, I struggled quite a bit to find the negatives on this one. Like I mentioned earlier, there is a big predictability factor in this movie. One that I would argue could ruin the film but doesn’t. It’s filled with strong performances that are only briefly mired when it dips in and out from being a silly, joke-riddled comedy to a very emotional and grief-filled tale (grief is a major theme in the entire plot). The serious/emotional moments are not equal in quality or performance either; something that surprised me coming specifically from LaKeith Stanfield who I have really enjoyed in other works. He absolutely sold his grief in one moment and then made it feel awkward and drawn out in the next. This lead to my final complaint for the film which was pacing. There is arguably a number of big chunks of scenes/dialogue that the movie could have done without. But it certainly didn’t ruin the experience for me and I liken it to the feeling that I got watching Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, where the moment I started to feel like a scene was running too long, it shifted into something else and I was able to forget the precipice of falling out of the moment.
Riot’s Ranking: 8/10: This is a solid “B” movie for me and one I wouldn’t mind watching again. I think ultimately the biggest mistake for this film was not waiting until Halloween to release it. Haunted Mansion is certainly fun for the whole family, but it will likely be deterred in popularity because of the studio’s bad planning.
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