Horrorfest 2023: Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion

Written by Katie Dippold

Directed by Justin Simien

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Dan Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jared Leto

USA, 2023

I didn't really feel like watching HAUNTED MANSION in the hot and sunny days of July, when it came out, and I guess a lot of other filmgoers felt the same way because it didn't make much of a splash. Things have changed now that it's gray and blustery outside, though, and Disney was wise to make it available for streaming just in time for Halloween -- some might say, the season it should have had its theatrical release in the first place.

I'm not very familiar with the theme park ride the movie is based on, and I never saw the 2003 version starring Eddie Murphy, but I can say I was pleasantly surprised with HAUNTED MANSION's mix of comedy and special effects. It wasn't quite the soulless cash grab that the trailers had me expecting. Similarly, despite what the trailers would have you think, Rosario Dawson is not the star of the film (she's FIFTH billed!), which would normally be a travesty, since she's a delight, but this time it's okay because it turns out LaKeith Stanfield is the star! You'd never know from the marketing.

Stanfield's endlessly watchable and sympathetic as an atypical choice to frontline a movie based on a Disney ride. And the rest of the casting is pretty good, too -- you've got Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Jamie Lee Curtis on hand, each ready to steal a scene or two. The only misstep is Jared Leto as the big bad villain, whose appearance and voice is so CGI'd up it might as well be anyone.

But what's it about, you ask? Well, an increasingly eclectic group of misfits end up trapped in a haunted mansion, forced to solve the mystery of the house's tragic past in order to survive. It gets a little more convoluted than that, but everything moves along so breezily it hardly seems to matter. I won't bore you with it here.

I will bore you with the reasons I liked it, though. I've already sung the praises of the cast, but I will add that the screenplay is uncommonly well written, giving us a wide variety of underdog characters to root for, each with their own problems in life to overcome. They all come together and are greater than the sum of their parts, forming a little family unit that thrives from helping each other. That kinda stuff is inspiring and positive, two feelings I didn't expect a HAUNTED MANSION movie to give me. You might say that's the kinda stuff Disney's good at, but I think they drop the ball about as often as they get it right, and I wasn't convinced this one would be able to get it right amongst all the sound and fury -- but it does!