Nine-hundred-ninety-nine ghosts aren’t the problem with "Haunted Mansion.”
It’s the overly talky script.
Based on the Disneyland attraction, “Mansion” feels an obligation to include key scenes and characters from the ride. As a result, it takes too long to shoehorn everything in.
Most horror films rely on looks, music and editing. This spends too much time justifying why an astro-physicist, an exorcist, a medium, a professor, a mother and her son are stuck in a house that looks more like a tear-down than a fixer-upper.
In that elaborate script by Katie Dippold, the group tries to figure out who is haunting Gracey Manor and why. That forces them through plenty of chase scenes and special effects that don’t quite stir the cauldron. Sure, you can recognize moments and characters, but the film doesn’t give them sufficient backstories.
Instead, the mom (Rosario Dawson) and son (a very charming Chase Dillon) let the “helpers” try to lead them down the right path. While Tiffany Haddish has fun as the medium, Jamie Lee Curtis gets the most laughs as Madame Leota and she’s reduced to very few scenes. That leaves Danny DeVito (a professor), Owen Wilson (an exorcist) and LaKeith Stanfield (the ghostbuster) to pick up the slack. Clearly, director Justin Simien could have winnowed this a bit more and let the ghosts get more of the attention.
When Jared Leto turns up (as the Hatbox Ghost), the plot turns and “Haunted Mansion” becomes a descent into something entirely different.
While the technical aspects are good (the sets look much like the ride), they can’t overcome that unwieldy script.
Stanfield, who’s an excellent actor, tries his hardest to give this more dimension and emotion. He has his own demons to exorcise and becomes a great player in a game that should have had more rules.
Like “The Haunted Mansion” (the Eddie Murphy version), “Haunted Mansion” needed to start from scratch with a good horror story (paging Jordan Peele), then layer in elements from the ride. That’s how “Pirates of the Caribbean” sailed. That’s how this -- another based-in-ride -- film could have launched its own franchise.
What keeps this “Haunted Mansion” grounded is a lack of surprise. Sure, ghosts pop up in unusual places, but there’s no clue as to why they’re here or what they’re seeking.
It’s an odd venture. But what it really needs is a theme park just waiting outside the exit doors. Somehow, too much time in one building can play nasty tricks on a person.
