‘Haunted Mansion Review: Jared Leto Plays A Headless Ghost In Sleepy, Hollow Movie Based On Classic Disneyland Ride
It's been a minute since I visited The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and saw Eddie Murphy's Cars adaptation of the classic theme park ride circa 2003, but I'm still convinced that none of those terrifying experiences compare to the terror that Justin Simien unleashes during the opening credits. I'd even argue that the new Haunted Mansion only needs seven short words to establish itself as the most exciting movie of the year, not to mention a more thrilling version of a dark ride designed to make 10-year-olds cry and laugh with their siblings.
Those lyrics, of course, are: "...and Jared Leto as the Hatbox Ghost."
Talk about your jump scares! Set in the saffron darkness of an incomparably spooky night, this terrifying piece hangs above the first hour from a Disney+-worthy tentpole like the Sword of Damocles. As the film slows down and reveals the possibility that it's nothing more than a trick of the light, the audience can only wait in anticipation to see what the man behind Morbius, Joker and Paolo Gucci will do to put their kids to bed with the lights on.
Unfortunately, when Leto's character finally gets to the center of one of the various, shapeless pieces that make this haunted mansion a death knell, the actor transfers his unrecognizable groan to the Grinch-like computer tower, which reverts to the attraction's original design. If it weren't for the opening credits, you'd have no idea who's playing the poltergeist; Not because Leto, known for his methodical nature, is deeply involved in his role, but because he doesn't play a big part at all.
Even from Jamie Lee Curtis' famous film as a psychic trapped in his crystal ball (so funny!) or Dan Levy's two-liner, one-faced film as a very haunted tour guide (Now I'm Dead Funny), Hatbox Ghost's performance disappoints.
Such disillusionment is so characteristic of the quiet, empty tale of a headless ghost and the ghosts of people trapped in his murderous house that Simien's first feature film fails to live up to its promises and fulfill its threats. It may appease a good portion of its target audience, which is PG-13 horror, just as it warmed up teenage audiences to Goosebumps or The Addams Family (2019), but it certainly won't haunt them to visit with their kids one day.
As with the previous Haunted Mansion film, this misstep certainly doesn't hurt the talent. As a gifted satirist—see the 2014 Sundance hit Dear White People, which was later turned into a brighter, more compelling Netflix series of the same name—as well as the clever mastermind of a horror comedy prequel ("Bad Hair"), Simien is the place to update this gritty IP for a modern audience.
Simien's renovation of the hotel is a lot of fun on paper, if only because of his decision to cast Lakeith Stanfield in the lead role. Race isn't overtly touched on in the film (the passage in which Stanfield refers to the police as the lesser of two evils comes pretty close), but Simien deepens Katie Diebold's easy script and reimagines it as the story of a sheltered black woman forced to manage her vulnerability in an increasingly haunted good world.
While it's a thoughtful approach that helps explain why Stanfield plays the recently widowed Ben as a man who can't pull up his pants in the morning without a compass, Judas and Messiah's inimitable black actor struggles (I mean, goes out of his way ) to tell the difference between the seriousness of his character and the spirit of the film. plastic overalls. A more generous explanation for Stanfield's mumbling and choking as a drunken New Orleans tour guide might be that he was trying to take advantage of Disney's great alcoholics of the past (notably Jack Sparrow), but the realistic nature of his character's circumstances prevents him from displaying such heartless indifference.
Ben, a former astrophysicist who invented a camera that can look into the spirit world, destroyed his invention after the death of his indiscriminate wife, making it too painful to use. Now she spends her days leading groups of white women named Carol through local attractions, vehemently denying the ghost stories they've heard about "the scariest town in the world."
You'd think inventing a camera that could see ghosts would convince Ben otherwise, but Haunted Mansion cares little or nothing about how much denial the protagonist has, let alone his feelings about the possibility of reuniting with his dead wife (an odd choice for a movie whose entire third act hinges on who comes up with the idea). One thing we do know is that when the Exorcist stops him, he doesn't take Kent's father seriously (Owen Wilson plays Kent's father in a hilarious performance that only Owen Wilson could give, which puts the fact that Owen Wilson has given him so many times in the past) into relief when the Exorcist stops him from cursing him with hope.
Here, a single mother from New York (Rosario Dawson as Gabe) and her nine-year-old son Travis (Chase W. Dillon) have just moved into Louisiana's most cursed mansion (!) and there is no hope of escaping its curse. The 999 spirits that live there will let you go at any time, but will haunt anyone who crosses the threshold for the rest of their lives, which helps explain why Father Kent has so much skin in the game. The same soon happens to Ben, a naïve local psychic named Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), who betrays her trust with her poor eyesight, and a crazy Tulane professor (DeVito), who watches too many episodes of Ghostbusters later.
Together, this motley crew of semi-paranormal experts will attempt to unravel the unsolved mystery of a large gruesome murder house that hints at a white rebellion against wealthy 19th-century Creoles, only to run into the archetypes of Tom Riddle's thousands of studios stacked on top of each other.
The material simply isn't strong or self-serving enough to support a cast as rich as Simien's assembled here, made all the more apparent by the director's ability to deliver ensemble comedy in the face of deadly peril. Because The Haunted Mansion is a well-balanced mix of soft vibes and dark CGI, Stanfield's urbane performance is a surprising exception in a film that, for all its flaws, does a good job balancing the line between fun and horror. Chandeliers float in the air, paintings follow you with their eyes, and blue uniformed ghosts continue to follow the cast through Scooby-Doo-style corridors long after it becomes clear that neither the living nor the dead know what to do if they come into contact with each other. or for themselves. Since there is no other meaningful relationship between Ben and Gabe, it might be helpful to acknowledge the inevitable attraction between them before the final seconds of the film.
But despite a strong opening in the first act and many scenes – in stark contrast to studio films of the past 10 years – shot out of nowhere in New Orleans, Haunted Mansion quickly devolves into a 123-minute search for form. Much of the action centers on Gabby's spacious new home, where the impressive collection soon gives way to long-distance pursuits that would be nearly impossible to orchestrate without the help of computers.
When someone hints in the opening minutes that "sadness can be a door to joy if you're willing to open it," those words sound like a perfect canvas early in the film, seemingly ready to recapture the joy of "My wife was in a fatal car accident on the way home from Burger King." When I revisited the idea for The Haunted Mansion almost two hours later, the relationship between sadness and joy feels like a depressing, self-serving theme for a movie that doesn't understand how normal doors work.
Even episodes about Disneyland's most popular attractions have been dwarfed by the rampant need for a big-screen spectacle. Believe it or not, the part where the walls stretch to reveal new horrors isn't helped by the sudden addition of a CGI crocodile that disappears after a few minutes, never to be remembered again. That classic "how did they do that?" The magic is replaced by options that seem set to hide what was done in the first place (I promised myself I wouldn't talk about digital zoom). When the engineers on the Haunted Mansion ride go horribly wrong, this version solves the "it doesn't matter where I am" confusion.
The dream sequences stop and start without any sense of place, pace or purpose, and are very scattered and never approach a sense of pacing. The spirits are as interchangeable as the passages, so much so that the film's only visible ghost—an old sailor in agony after a fatal spell—is left with a sack for an entire army of the undead. Indeed, it's admirable that a movie with 999 Ghosts and Jared Leto as the villainous lead feels so heartless.
Walt Disney Pictures releases The Haunted Mansion in theaters on Friday, July 28.
