Haunt­ed Man­sion review – feels more like a prod­uct than a story

In a world where blood is being squeezed out of every IP stone, Dis­ney Land’s Haunt­ed Man­sion ride being turned into a sec­ond live-action film bare­ly rais­es an eye­brow. The first attempt, in 2003, star­ring Eddie Mur­phy was quick­ly (and right­ful­ly) for­got­ten. 20 years lat­er, after a long-teased ver­sion by Guiller­mo Del Toro that nev­er came to fruition, the man­sion is back, the keys now in the hands of Dear White Peo­ple direc­tor Justin Simien.

Simien, to his cred­it, sig­nif­i­cant­ly improves upon his pre­de­ces­sor. His ver­sion sees sin­gle moth­er Gab­bie (Rosario Daw­son) and her son Travis (Chase Dil­lon) move to a ghost-rid­den man­sion on the out­skirts of New Orleans, only to find that even if you leave the house, the ghosts will fol­low you wher­ev­er you flee and demand your return. Stuck in an impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion, they recruit a rag-tag team of a priest (Owen Wil­son), a psy­chic medi­um (Tiffany Had­dish), an aca­d­e­m­ic (Dan­ny DeVi­to), and an astro­physi­cist turned ghost tour guide (LaKei­th Stan­field) to rid them of these spooks. The ensem­ble is an unsur­pris­ing­ly fun one, with Wil­son, Had­dish and Devi­to deliv­er­ing the exact schtick that they are best known for. But there’s also a real sweet­ness in the bond formed between Dil­lon and Stanfield’s char­ac­ters, each feel­ing alone in the world and work­ing through grief in their own way, slow­ly open­ing up to the poten­tial of a new family.

While those ele­ments sur­pass expec­ta­tions and seem to be where Simien has placed most of his efforts, lin­ger­ing on each glance and kind exchange between the two, the rest of the film is dis­qui­et­ing­ly at odds with their authen­tic­i­ty and packed filled with east­er eggs, brazen prod­uct place­ment, and shon­ky com­put­er graph­ics. The use of Jared Leto is par­tic­u­lar­ly strange, appear­ing as ​“The Hat­box Ghost”, who is only in por­traits, and his ​“char­ac­ter” is ful­ly dig­i­tal with an unrec­og­niz­ably processed voice. After so many sto­ries emerged about Leto’s act­ing meth­ods, includ­ing need­ing a wheel­chair to go the bath­room so he could stay in char­ac­ter dur­ing Mor­bius, one could see that employ­ing a load of CGI would be a more palat­able propo­si­tion than a film set with Leto going full Hat­box Ghost. But his pres­ence, along with the blink-and-you-’ll-miss-it cameos from Winona Ryder and Dan Levy, beg the question…if we aren’t prop­er­ly using these actors why have them here at all?

Stan­field has so much movie star charis­ma and a sweet soul­ful­ness; in scenes where he con­fronts his past, grief pours out of giant wet eyes that are half Steve Busce­mi half spaniel pup­py. Every time we lose him to a con­found­ing action set piece or his per­for­mance swal­lowed up in chaot­ic SFX, the film imme­di­ate­ly feels more like a prod­uct than a story.

There is an unshake­able sense that Simien may have lost a lit­tle con­trol in the edit, thanks to Chase Dillon’s growth spurt and voice deep­en­ing, its clear which scenes have been reshot, and cer­tain plot ele­ments appear that seem whol­ly unteth­ered from what came before. It’s a shame since this gang of char­ac­ters is a joy and the lev­el of scares is per­fect­ly pitched to be a younger generation’s entry into hor­ror movie fan­dom. But ulti­mate­ly, the won­der­ful fam­i­ly movie in here that’s scream­ing to get out is hope­less­ly trapped in Disney’s Haunt­ed Mansion.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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