This is the not the first time that Disney has tried to cinema-ize its Haunted Mansion attraction. That perennial favorite got the film treatment 20 years ago with Eddie Murphy heading an indifferent story and a sentimental subplot that I found to be more interesting than anything involving Mr. Murphy. Alas, this latest attempt fares little better. The special effects are the best thing it has going for it, along with a performance by LaKeith Stanfield that is so much more than the role as written that he might well be deserving of a co-writing credit.
He is Ben, an astrophysicist whose grief over losing his wife has driven him to invent a camera lens that can detect the so-called ghost particle. It’s also driven him to lead tours of his home city, New Orleans, though with whatever the opposite of panache is. Never mind his abominable people skills.
Into his life, and his messy apartment, strides Father Kent (Owen Wilson), sporting a cat, a rabbit’s foot, and an offer to let Ben be a hero. There’s also $2000 involved. So even though Ben most emphatically doesn’t believe in ghosts, lens invention notwithstanding, he arrives at the titular mansion where Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her nine-year-old son, Travis (Chase Dillon) would like him to capture the spirits’ images so that they can be exorcised. She’s a doctor with dreams of running a bed-and-breakfast (hence purchasing the property unseen), and he’s a spiffy dresser in bow tie, knee pants, and pocket-protector, and they are both stuck. As to why they just don’t do the sensible thing and leave, well, they’re both trapped by the army of ghosts in their new home, the kind that follow people when they try to leave and hector them into returning.
What we have here is a half-baked script replete with first-rate (fully baked?) special effects and performances from terrific actors trapped in a middling film the way their characters are trapped in the mansion. The big effects are great, from Jamie Lee Curtis as a medium trapped in a giant crystal ball, to hallways that expand in Escher-like directions in the ghost realm, and a sou’wester that blows through Ben’s apartment. Notably, the smaller ones are equally impressive. Like the wet footprints that trudge along, splashing as they go, or the mile-high turban worn by Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), not to mention her complicated eye-makeup.
Not even Haddish and her burbling sass can rescue the curious lethargy that pervades the proceedings, nor Danny DeVito’s angry beachball of a college professor with curious dining habits who knows the history, and possibly secrets, of the mansion. A great deal happens, but with thudding lack of energy that undermines any jump-and-scare potential, much less the heart-tugging elements so desperately trying to infect us. It is slapdash where it should be slapstick, and uninvolving when it should be scary, which is exactly what Jared Leto as the Hatbox Ghost should be with that grinning skull of a face on a detached head. Only Stanfield’s grief, masked in vitriol and cynicism, registers emotionally, and, against all odds, he brings an almost heroic dignity to the part. He also has an excellent scream in a film bereft of any real suspense, horror, or belly laughs, despite the rare manifestation of a dash of whimsy or snappy one-liner that surfaces like ectoplasm only to dissipate as quickly as it manifested.
HAUNTED MANSION references the Disneyland attraction with great precision, and it also features some of the most egregious product placement in a Disney film to-date. It needs to have been so much more than just visually engaging to succeed. N.B. Lakeith Stanfield deserves a special award for keeping it from being a total loss.
Your Thoughts?