- Title: Haunted Mansion (2023)
- IMDb: link
Disney’s original The Haunted Mansion is far from a great movie, but it does work as a serviceable family film featuring a family locked in a house full of ghosts. 20 years later Disney tries its hand at a new version of the film based on a Disney park ride. The result is a terminally boring film filled with a more eclectic cast than the original, and certainly a higher effects budget, but one that can never get out of first gear leaving you languishing with the kind of TV-movie you’d gladly turn off after ten minutes.
The set up this time involves a single mother (Rosario Dawson) and her son (Chase Dillon) who trick an odd assortment of other guests (LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, and Danny DeVito) into the house looking for help to break the curse and release the ghosts before the most evil among them claims another victim allowing it escape the house. The real victims here, however, are the audience, trapped and unable to leave the theater while being bored to death.
The actors aren’t bad here doing what they can with Wilson and DeVito each trying in vain to bring some life to the proceedings with their own schtick, and the house and ghosts are creepy enough for the kid-level of spooky that Disney is going for, but there’s simply no fun to be had as the script drags its bloodied half-animated corpse around the mansion for over two hours before mercifully being put out of its misery by the closing credits.
Watch the trailer
