Director: Justin Simien
Cast: LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Dan Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jared Leto
Screenplay: Katie Dippold
123 mins. Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and scary action.

For years, Disney has been trying to use the strength of there park rides to conjure up new film franchises. Recently, their “adaptation” of the Jungle Cruise ride became an occasionally capable but altogether forgettable film, even with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt to lead. Now, director Justin Simien (TV’s Dear White People) has been tasked with taking another crack at The Haunted Mansion, disconnected from their previous Eddie Murphy-led film from 2003.

Gabbie (Rosario Dawson, Rent) and her son have moved to the Gracey Manor in order to start a bed and breakfast before quickly discovering that the mansion is, well, haunted by numerous spirits. Enlisting the help of Father Kent (Owen Wilson, The Royal Tenenbaums) and a team of paranormally-inclined persons like the astrophysicist-turned-ghost tour personality Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield, Sorry to Bother You) in order to rid the house of its spectors and make it a livable home, but they soon find that the mansion’s dead inhabitants have no intention of leaving.

Full disclosure: I’ve never ridden the Haunted Mansion ride, nor have I ever seen the original 2003 film version, but I did play the video game tie-in for that film on my Gamecube, not too bad a game if I may admit. I will also contend that I was pretty excited for the cast and crew of this newest installment. Outside of Tiffany Haddish (who, much like Melissa McCarthy for a good amount of time earlier in her career, has been essentially playing a less-impressive version of the same character), I was very excited to see how director Simien would play with the impressive combinations of Stanfield, Wilson, Dawson, and also Danny DeVito (Matilda) in the lead roles.

Unfortunately, though the cast does admirably, the film’s screenplay gives them virtually nothing fun to do. Disney has been trying to replicate that Pirates of the Caribbean formula for years, turning their park rides into popular IP, and the biggest problem with these repeated disappointments is that, outside of Pirates, they keep making movies that feel like Disney movies instead of standing out. There’s very to distinguish the writing in Katie Dippold’s (The Heat) screenplay from the paint-by-numbers execution of Jungle Cruise. There are a number of interesting ideas presented (including the terrific explanation for why Dawson’s characters doesn’t flat-out leave the residence), but they are never developed, and the narrative lumbers like a walking corpse between each plot point.

The cast pairings have some moments of luster, like the inspired chemistry between Stanfield and DeVito (buddy copy film in the future?) and Wilson knows exactly the movie he’s in, really shining in the emotional moments and embracing his past (The Haunting remake) in the film’s occasional spooky scenes. At the same time, Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) is wasted in the villainous role, and Dan Levy has less than a minute of screen time for someone with near-top billing, leading this viewer wondering if there were some major reworkings in the narrative resulting in a less-than-stellar final product.

Sadly, Haunted Mansion just isn’t a very thrilling film. I’d been hoping that Simien’s film could reignite the obvious need for more family-friendly horror that’s been missing for decades, but the film has no real narrative push past the first act, and I found myself losing interest pretty quickly. A Haunted Mansion film could work (Guillermo del Toro circled the project for some time back in the 2010s) if they embraced the intended genre in the same way that Pirates embraced the adventure genre so well in 2003, but it never reaches those heights, merely ending up “fine” with the potential for so much more.

2.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe