Disney's second attempt to make a film off of its Haunted Mansion ride is a harmless piece of family fluff. The new version (shot in New Orleans) won't become a new Disney classic, but it'll pass the time well enough for families looking to beat the heat.
Director Justin Simien's (Dear White People) film tells the story of a group of people stuck in the titular mansion: a grieving scientist (Lakeith Stanfield), a mother (Rosario Dawson) and her son (Chase Dillon), a huckster priest (Owen Wilson), a professor (Danny Devito), and a psychic (Tiffany Haddish). Katie Dippold's script is sensible enough to make it so once a person crosses the threshold of the house, ghosts will harass them even if they leave so viewers can't ask the "Why don't they just leave?" question left open in other haunted house films. The story boils down to a sinister spirit (Jared Leto) needing one more soul before he can break the confines of the mansion and wreak havoc on the real world.
The film's biggest problem is it takes too long to get going. It's not a film that needed to be 122 minutes long and it's far too leisurely in assembling its six protagonists in the same place. But once everyone's at the mansion and the stakes become clear, the film becomes reasonably entertaining. The cast has a good chemistry together and the laughs are dispersed generously among them.
