Haunted Mansion (2023)

Directed by Justin Simien. Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, Chase W. Dillon, Tiffany Haddish, Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charity Jordan, (voice) Jared Leto. [PG-13]

Second attempt to turn Disney’s ride-through theme park attraction into a movie may actually have you wishing you were watching the Eddie Murphy version instead (that one also stinks, but it’s more than a half-hour shorter). In this take, a disgruntled “ghost tour” guide (Stanfield) with a background in astrophysics teams up with a priest (Wilson), a medium (Haddish), and a historian (DeVito) to help the new owners of a haunted mansion get rid of their ghost problem. A labored, erratic mess pretty much all the way, overstuffed with unnecessary details and plot distractions (anemic comedy getting in the way of the story action one minute, back story and “trade talk” defeating any rhythm to the humor the next), and oversaturated with artificial effects and airbrushes to the point where it all practically turns into a cartoon in the final act. Those visuals are busy but careless, and while we can be grateful that Jared Leto merely supplies his digitally-modulated voice to the proceedings (and likeness for a few photos), it doesn’t solve the issue that the ghosts are neither fun nor frightening to witness, and the general overkill of mayhem coupled with unattractive lighting and impatient editing calls to mind the likes of the Casper movie adaptation and the unwarranted reboot of Ghostbusters. Speaking of editing, pacing issues—frenzied one moment, torpid the next—further prevent the confused narrative from ever taking hold, and speaking of Ghostbusters, the script shares a scribe (Katie Dippold) who should apparently be kept far, far away from supernatural comedies, in this life and the next. At least it’s more “total waste of time”-bad than “head-splitting disaster”-bad, so if it was Owen Wilson’s career goal to appear in a haunted house movie that’s not quite as terrible as that The Haunting remake…mission accomplished, I guess? Winona Ryder makes an uncredited cameo appearance as a tour guide for a different mansion.

31/100