Disney can’t decide if they want this thing to be a quirky and fun but unsettling movie like “Beetlejuice» or another schlocky ad for a Disney World FastPass.
“Haunted Mansion”?
Haunted Franchise, more like.
Disney’s hardly scary family movie is the studio’s second attempt at turning its 53-year-old theme park ride into a film after the execrable 2003 effort starring Eddie Murphy.
Twenty years later, the reboot directed by the talented Justin Simien (“Bad Hair”) is at least better than that aughts Hollywood horror show, if somehow 32 minutes longer.
It’s even almost good.
But waffling Disney can’t decide if it wants this thing to be a quirky and fun but unsettling movie like “Beetlejuice,” with some real guts and creativity, or another schlocky ad for a Disney World FastPass.
At times Simien’s film is surprisingly dark and emotionally honest, while at others it’s kitschier than “The Country Bear Jamboree.”
When “Haunted Mansion” gets too silly — Jamie Lee Curtis cashing a check as the floating head of Madame Leota in a crystal ball, Owen Wilson as a priest sweet-talking a bunch of centuries-old ghosts, CGI that was state-of-the-art in 1998 — we totally stop believing in the story.
How frustrating, because there are glimmers of promise.
One is the excellent lead, LaKeith Stanfield (“Get Out,” “Judas and the Black Messiah”), as Ben, an astrophysicist turned New Orleans haunted house tour guide.
