Haunted Mansion

 

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Haunted Mansion follows a group of four paranormal experts who attempt to help a young mother and her son with thwarting the spirits that haunt the mansion they live within. This film really hits the ground running and opens strongly with showing a fantastic horror open, the sort that you would expect from a more mature horror feature with characters that are a little whackier and light-hearted. Watching the mum and son duo immediately flee the haunted mansion in their introduction gives you a sense that this is going to be more adventure than ghost story, and a good thing too. The movie really thrives when it is having fun, being creative with the hauntings or really diving into the mystery of the mansion as the antagonist works against them. I also like the bonds that are shown throughout the film, there is a lot of heart on display around how these six characters are thrust reluctantly together and become a sort of found family by the end of the feature. Even within that dynamic you have two smaller narratives around a family grieving loss and a man grieving loss alone after the passing of his wife. The work done in this film to surprise us around these themes of grief and coming together is what makes the final act twist such a good one, that key moment marked this as a better blockbuster in my mind.

The visual effects are goofy and silly at times but there is a lot of variety here and the detail to be found is really quite impressive. The designs for the ghosts and how they move genuinely are quite breathtaking, and I adored what they did with the design of the Hatbox Ghost. The score for Haunted Mansion is such a wild ride because it has that light and energetic quality that made 90s family-horrors such classics; my mind immediately going to Casper the Friendly Ghost or even Hocus Pocus.

 

Rosario Dawson, who played Gabbie, is such an incredibly fierce and protective character who has you hooked from her first scene; Dawson gets to portray her mother role as a caring one but also someone who is a bit of a fighter when it comes to her kid. Tiffany Haddish, who played Harriet, is the best film role I've seen from her in awhile; Haddish really shows off her comedic backbone with this wise-cracking medium who will leave you in hysterics. Danny DeVito, who played Bruce Davis, is truly the only performer in the cast who could give Haddish a run for her money when it comes to comedy; DeVito is such an earnest actor and he really gives his all to any scene he happens to be in. Chase Dillon, who played Travis, is such a brilliant young performer with a wealth of talent; I loved how Dillon managed to craft Dillon as this awkward figure with a much more mature outlook than most kids his age. Jared Leto, who played the Hatbox Ghost, really has a bit of a comeback moment with this role in my eyes; Leto as the antagonist of this feature is truly terrifying and intimidating for almost the whole feature. Charity Jordan, who played Alyssa, just has such beautiful onscreen chemistry with Stanfield; Jordan feels warm spirited and portrays a kind sort of love exceptionally well in so few scenes.

However, the best performance came from LaKeith Stanfield, who played Ben Matthias. This was a role that really surprised me and won me over through the course of the feature. When first we meet Ben he is a bit of an awkward figure, but with this quiet charisma that makes the opening scene of him falling in love so endearing. But then there's this great moment of whiplash, we reconnect with Stanfield's character years later and he is so unlikeable. The energy in the performance is gone, the body language screams "I don't care" and the attitude is really abrasive. Yet there's still that humour, those snarky quips here and there that make Stanfield such a good performer; because those little nuggets are what he builds on to bring his character back to the audience. The more time we spend with Ben, seeing him forced to get along with others essentially endears us to him. Stanfield is so good at taking his protagonist's walls down in a way that the audience genuinely believes. The way in which he plays grief really hits the hardest of all, seeing Stanfield in absolute tears as he recounts how he lost his wife is perhaps the most moving moment of the feature. Every film needs some heart and Stanfield is a master and showing a stone one that turns to gold.

Haunted Mansion is a film that starts off surprisingly strong with the ties to horror, you almost get the promise of a great tightrope walk between family film and horror feature. Alas, this film doesn't really manage that walk and what we actually get is a film that really wanders off track in terms of tone. The really scary aspects of the horror get abandoned around the halfway mark, almost as if the movie isn't really interested in being scary anymore. In fact, the ghosts become a lot more playful and the butt of the joke really, taking a lot of the punch out of the work from the first half of the feature. Even the Hatbox Ghost turns more into a CGI moustache twirling baddie as opposed to that dark lingering presence we had initially. The family adventure component really takes over which isn't always a bad thing but it does mean the stakes for the film lower themselves somewhat. More than this the film can be funny but the dialogue struggles to be sometimes; there's a whole scene where two characters exchange egg puns and it really falls flat.

The way this is shot leaves a lot to be desired; there are a lot of simple wides that highlight the studio limitations of where they filmed or the heavy presence of special effects. More than this, when the camerawork tries to get creative it really winds up just feeling too busy and sometimes looks at odds with the style of the rest of the scene.

Owen Wilson, who played Father Kent, seems entirely unnecessary to the film as a whole; this role is really crafted for Wilson to just play himself but the comedy coming from him is constantly eclipsed by his co-stars. Jamie Lee Curtis, who played Madame Leota, feels like Curtis just wasn't really interested in lending much to this role; as a character Leota is very impassive and so Curtis never really rises above that one character trait.

A fun introduction to horror for kids and a great family film that is only really held back by some frequent tonal whiplash. I would give Haunted Mansion a 7/10.