Haunt 1! Haunt 2!   See, I’m Mr. Autumn with these near football expressions. This article be  Haunt 1 – Disney’s Haunted Mansion 2023.

Let’s go back to The summer of 2023. Summer is the season of blockbuster movies. How often did I go to the theater last summer?  Just once for Spider-Man: Across the Multiverse.  I really did mean to check out Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but I guess my personal dial of destiny wasn’t set up for that. I never had any interest in seeing Barbie. Looking back, it sounds like Oppenheimer was the best of the summer movies. Missed that as well.

There was another movie I thought about going to the theater to see that summer. But after reading the dreadful reviews Haunted Mansion received, I decided I would wait until this Disney movie came out on Disney+. I still await for good ol’ Indy to stream his Dial of Destiny on that platform.  As for Haunted Mansion, it premiered this past week. I watched it. I’m so glad I didn’t pay theater prices to see this film. So effin’ glad!

I knew what I was getting into. Based on the reviews, I understood the kind of movie it was without even seeing it. I knew there was a very little chance I would like this movie. Still, I hoped to find something favorable about it. And I kind of did, enough for me not to give this film a grade of an F.  D+ should cover it.  Hey, it’s a high D!  That’s something!

Based on the Disney World attraction of the same name, I guess Haunted Mansion is supposed to be a horror fantasy comedy. Since it’s rated PG-13, I can’t describe it as a fun for the whole family kind of movie. Probably too scary for the littlest of ones.  There are severed heads and stuff like that. Little kids wouldn’t really get it anyway. As a comedy, the humor falls flat. The ghosts are too hokey to be scary. Its fantasy elements are probably the strongest points, but even with those there is a lot to be desired.

Plot-in-brief: A widow and her young boy son move into a mansion that turns out to be haunted. Through a series of plot-forced events, a wacky-team of paranormal experts and one haunted house historian come to their aid and try to unhaunt the house, bringing with them the personal baggage of their personal lives which include grief, dishonesty, self-doubt, all wrapped up in over-the-top cheesiness.

The ghosts look like CGI specters straight from the 90s. It’s funny, because I remember visiting the Disney World attraction in 1982-83. The three-dimensional ghosts impressed me but I’m told the attraction hasn’t changed much. Maybe that’s why the special effects of the movie are the way they are, to keep on par with an outdated attraction?  Gosh, I don’t know.

The cast is made up of well known stars. How did I like them and/or the characters they played?

• Rosario Dawson as the widow: Her character is kind of boring. I’d rather watch her as Ahsoka Tano from the Star Wars universe.
• Tiffany Haddish as a spiritual medium. She’s supposed to be funny but to me she’s obnoxious. I liked her in Girls’ Trip and maybe only in Girls’ Trip. Just as the ghosts in this film are trapped in the mansion, so is Haddish trapped in one movie as an entertainer that makes me laugh
• Owen Wilson as a priest. I already suffered with this guy in one haunted house movie (The 1999 remake of The Haunting). Now here he is again. Please Owen, stay away from haunted house films.
• Danny DeVito as a historian.  He is just sort of there doing typical Danny Devito stuff.
• Jared Leto as The Hat-Box ghost. Meh! He looks like The Grinch in a Scrooge costume. Next!
• Jamie Lee Curtis as  some dead medium trapped in a crystal ball. I can’t say much else, Jamie, cause you are just some head in a ball.
• LaKeith Stanfield – the main protagonist. You I liked. You were the most real

Cast – done. What next? The humor. I mean, I understood when something was supposed to be funny. Like Tiffany Haddish’s precious séance materials, on sale at Costco or something to that effect. The exact lines don’t matter.. It won’t make the moment seem any funnier. It’s sort of like when a dude at a bar comes back from the pisser and announces to his buddies, “I just drained the main vein” or “Beer goes in, Beer goes out.”  Of course the buddies laugh because they recognize these statements as “humor” and, well Hell, you’re supposed to laugh at humor, ain’t ya?

On to the fantasy elements.  Hallways turning topsy-turvy. Faces forming inside candles. A crocodile climbing up the walls. These are the things I like. The design/setting of the house, the portraits on the wall coming to life. I would have preferred this whole viewing experience be a first person walkthrough of the whole mansion, with ghostly happenings occurring everywhere. Yeah, have a  few characters doing something but keep it simple

Let’s end where the film ends. Ghosts be dancing in the main dining room to  New Orleans Jazz! Oh no, a spoiler! Who cares! I did like the music. Then finally, it all comes to a close with a final message, a suggestion from Disney itself  – “Since You watched Haunted Mansion…”  And there it was, in a small box at the top of the screen “Star Wars Episode 2 – Attack of the Clones.”

It’s one of those messages that gets a person thinking deep thoughts. A “hmmmm” was in order on my part. What the hell does this movie have to do with the plights of  Star Wars heroes Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi? To this very hour, I still do not know.  I hate unsolved riddles as much as Anakin hates sand.