Worth: $9.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, LaKeith Stanfield, Danny De Vito
Intro:
… a star-studded corpse.
From out of the graveyard full of Guillermo Del Toro’s unrealised creative projects, the spectre of a nostalgic 2003 film (and a more recent Muppets-ified version from 2021) has risen in Disney’s latest attempt to turn a beloved theme park ride into a motion picture. Unfortunately, this domicile is more mildly perturbed than truly Haunted.
The cast for this is absolutely stacked, from its main stars to the eye-catching cameos, and much like The Pope’s Exorcist, there’s a chance that their collective energy might be enough to offset the weakness of the material they’ve been given.
LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish and Rosario Dawson are all fully equipped to dish out director Justin Simien’s (Dear White People, Bad Hair) caustic brand of racial humour, but whatever edge existed in his past work has been sanded off into a perfect sphere. As much as the film pokes at basic White behaviour, like a gag with Dan Levy as a bed & breakfast theatre actor right out of Hotel Hell, even its best moments are like hazy shadows of the Black horror renaissance we are currently experiencing thanks to Monkeypaw Productions.
This isn’t helped by the script, courtesy of Ghostbusters 2016 and Snatched writer Katie Dippold, where the quips and gags are covered in as many cobwebs as the Mansion itself. Some of it is played up as knowingly cheesy, like when they start rattling off egg puns, but whatever laughs it manages to generate… well, it’s difficult to distinguish if it’s because the jokes are any good, or if it’s just the charisma of the actors artificially charging them up.
To say nothing of the film’s approach to theme, mainly its discussions of grief with a Louisiana backdrop. To say its tackling of the idea is milquetoast would be putting it mildly, and the less said about its use of imagery from Hurricane Katrina and Deep South slavery, the better.
Then there’s the disheartening lack of scares in this ‘horror’ film. Even the 2003 Eddie Murphy vehicle of the same name, as wonky as it is, had actual spoopy moments in it that still kinda work today. Here, though, we get an overload of lore from the original park ride that doesn’t add anything to the story, uninteresting creature designs (the scariest thing about the Big Bad Hatbox Ghost is that he’s credited as being voiced by Jared Leto, although with that vocal filter, you can barely tell), and dodgy CGI that just turns the Mansion into the music video for Muse’s You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween. At least the music isn’t as trash; Kris Bowers brings some much-appreciated Bourbon Street flavour here.
Haunted Mansion is a star-studded corpse. The cast do their damnedest to give it some life, but its tired jokes, disorganised story, and unmistakable stench of wasted potential make this feel like it has training wheels welded onto it. It’s a poor substitute for much better haunted house flicks, right down to the Winona Ryder appearance, and were it not for the overqualified on-screen talent, this easily could’ve just crept onto Disney+ without anyone even noticing.
