Haunted Mansion Review

*Movie Rating: 8.5/10

**Film Rating: 10/10

I saw Haunted Mansion when it first came out in theaters and watched it again on Disney+ for this review. There are many details I didn't notice until my second viewing that I'll be talking about below, but right now, let's talk about expectations. Anyone who knows anything about me knows I scare relatively easily and as a result, I am not part of the group that loves Halloween and all things scary. I want to. I really do, but if I sit through something truly scary, like the new Exorcist movie or any Conjuring film I won't sleep for days. So, when I saw the trailer for Haunted Mansion, I was actually excited. I was looking forward to being able to add another movie to the list of Spooky Season movies that wouldn't keep me up for days. The trailer and the performances within really projected this movie's tone as more spooky than scary and that was right up my alley. Also, I am a fan of the old Haunted Mansion film. For those of you who have seen 2003's The Haunted Mansion, and are now thinking I have terrible taste in movies, it's worth reading that I don't believe the 2003 film is genuinely good in almost any sense of the word. It is more like a classic that I watched as a child and has since been a comfort to me during Spooky Season. That being said, I was curious to see how, if at all, Disney was going to reference the previous movie. I have also ridden the ride at one of the Disney parks and I am interested to see how well the movie would tie into the ride. Basically, I was excited for something that is more spooky than scary, I was excited to see this cast together, and I was interested in how they would reference the previous film and the amusement park ride. Alright, lets get on to my thoughts on the film.

I want to do things a little backward today. I want to start with the bad stuff to get it out of the way. If its not already obvious by how this film scored on my scales, I don't have much bad stuff to say about it. Obviously, there is something or it would have scored a 10/10 on both scales. Now, I absolutely love Jamie Lee Curtis, but her performance in this movie, some of her line delivery is a little overacted. Now I don't want to drag her performance too hard because I don't know if it was on purpose or not but I did want to mention it as it took me out of the movie, even if it was only for a second. The other thing I wanted to talk about in this section, is the CGI. If you read any of the other reviews for this film, and I have, the two biggest critiques of the film were that it wasn't scary and that the CGI was terrible. I will comment on the former later on in this review, but I have something to say about the CGI. Now, I'm not one of those people where slightly bad CGI takes me out of the movie. I'm usually too engrossed in the story and action to notice CGI unless it's terrible, I mean, I grew up on 90's and 2000s movies. But there are two specific places in the film where the CGI was noticeably bad. Now, I'm going to be as vague as possible, you know we don't do spoilers here at Film Addict Reviews. The first time, I noticed it was in one specific sequence where Lakeith Stanfield's Ben Mathias was running through a hallway that was moving. You could see that his entire body was CGI and the movement was just off. Noticeably so. The second part with unfortunate CGI and the part that bothered me the most was Madame Leota's head in the crystal ball. They CGI'd her entire face and it was noticeably off-putting. At least for me. I personally prefer the effects they used in the 2003 movie for the character.

Well, that wraps up the bad now let's get to the good stuff. I mentioned it above but I will say it again, I love this cast. Nearly all of them gave great performances but the real standouts were Lakeith Stanfield and Tiffany Haddish. Yes, Tiffany Haddish who you saw in the trailer and probably thought she was only there for comedic relief gave us one of my personal favorite performances of her career. But Lakeith Stanfield's performance makes his character, Ben, so incredibly human. So relatable. I can't say too much else without spoiling important plot points, so let's move on to something a little smaller that needs to be mentioned. The characters react realistically to ghosts. I would like to repeat that so it really sinks in; The characters react realistically to ghosts. None of the characters are particularly stupid and put themself in danger unrealistically. For example, the skeptic, I'm not saying who because no spoilers, explores a ghost-filled part of the house to get answers, he only does it once and becomes much less reckless once he sees how real the threat is. One character is a little more reckless throughout the movie but it makes sense given who their character is. So basically, these "horror movie" characters aren't complete idiots. I write "horror movie" in quotations because it's not particularly scary. It really delivers on the more spooky tone that the trailer hinted at and honestly what else would you expect from a Disney film based on one of the rides at their parks? Also, the movie's tone perfectly emulated the ride, much better than its 2003 predecessor. As for referencing the previous movie, it's not done in any really obvious way. The characters of Eleanor and Gracy in the previous movie are the same in the new one but there is not much else. Now, to move on to the story and directing. Starting with the directing, it's incredibly well done. Much better than I, and probably anyone else, expected. They could have really half-assed the directing and I don't anyone would have particularly cared. But they went all in. There is so much attention to detail. It's honestly too much to mention here, but there is one scene towards the very beginning. The transition from what Stanfield's Ben is doing, to what Rosario Dawson's Gabbie is doing and where they both are is so great, that I barely noticed it in my first viewing. Now onto the writing. Much like the directing, they could have put minimal effort into a generic spooky story about ghosts haunting a house and it would have been fine. Not great, but fine. But they didn't. They went the extra mile and wrote a human and compelling story about loss and grieving and coming to terms with losing a loved one. Not just coming to terms with it but how we cope. It's compelling and relatable to everyone who has experienced loss. It's not too complicated, not a whole lot of metaphors or symbolism (this isn't a Jordan Peele Production), but this is a family movie so the way the themes are presented is nearly perfect for this film.

All in all, I want to say that I genuinely loved this movie. If you are looking for something scary, look much further. But, if you are looking for a spooky family film that has some real laughs and a story that will keep you engaged this is the one for you! I want to add that I don't think this movie gets enough love because of its low critic score but it was a delight to watch both times I enjoyed it and if you have even a passing thought about watching it please do. I do not think you will regret it.

As always, thank you for reading my review. If you read this far you are officially a film addict and I would love to hear your thoughts. I hope you have a day as great as your favorite spooky movie!

*The movie rating is a rating based solely on entertainment value. Purely how much the movie entertains. Bad writing or acting doesn't matter as much for this rating scale because as long as the writing and acting entertain, it will score well.

**The Film rating scale is based on the quality of writing, directing, acting, and other film techniques that go into the film. Just because a movie is entertaining doesn't mean it's written or directed particularly well so it may not score well on this scale.