Haunted Mansion – Movie Review
Director: Justin Simien
Writer: Katie Dippold (Screenplay)
Cast
- LaKeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You)
- Rosario Dawson (Rent)
- Owen Wilson (Shanghai Noon)
- Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip)
- Danny DeVito (Jumanji The Next Level)
Plot: A single mom named Gabbie hires a tour guide, a psychic, a priest and a historian to help exorcise her newly bought mansion after discovering it is inhabited by ghosts.
Runtime: 2 Hours 3 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Haunted Mansion starts when Gabbie (Dawson) and her son Travis (Dillon) move into a new historical mansion. However, they soon discover it is haunted and try to leave. Meanwhile, a former genius scientist turned tour guide Ben (Stanfield) gets recruited by Father Kent (Wilson) to help the family out.
When they also discover they must return to the house. They put together a team including medium Harriet (Haddish) and historian Bruce (DeVito) to unlock the secrets of the mansion. However, what they discover puts them in a race against time to learn what created the haunting in the first place.
Verdict on Haunted Mansion
Haunted Mansion is a fantasy horror comedy following a group of experts that come together to help a family deal with their ghost problem. However, they find themselves needing to challenge more than their best skills to understand what the house wants.
This is a remake of the 2003 movie of the same name. It gets to put a bigger spotlight on the different experts that come to help. While Ben gets the most focus because of his own tragic story, the other experts play their part in the fight. It does get held down in places with the pure number of ghosts involved. Not giving enough of them a chance to be the main spotlight. However, this is more about the living and showing the importance of overcoming tragedy. It is still fun, and has laughs even if some of the actors doing their specialist routine, rather than natural jokes. There is a big heart and this could easily be one of the first horror movies to show a growing audience.
Final Thoughts – Haunted Mansion is a fun-filled family horror comedy.