I watched the first Haunted Mansion film starring Eddie Murphy about a year and a half ago during the DailyView here on EYG. It had a terrible word of mouth and a low Rotten Tomatoes score, but I did not hate it. I went in with ow expectations and enjoyed it fine. It wasn’t a great movie, but it did not come off as the horrendous film that I heard it was.

I wasn’t sure if Disney needed a new version of Haunted Mansion, but here we go anyway. This time I went to the theater and I had a similar reaction to this film. I enjoyed it enough though it was not a brilliant film.

Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase Dillon) moved into a mansion and they realized that the place was haunted and the ghosts would follow them and make them come back. Gabbie looked for help from Father Kent (Owen Wilson) who went to find Ben (LaKeith Stanfield).

Ben had developed a camera that could reportedly photograph spirits because his deceased wife (Charity Jordan) was a tour guide who showed haunted sites.

The problem was, once anyone entered the mansion, they had ghosts following them and haunting them until they came back, sufficiently trapping them in the house.

There were two more characters brought in to help with the attempt to figure out what to do. One, Tiffany Haddish played medium Harriet and Danny DeVito played Bruce, expert on local mansions who always wanted to see this one. The ‘Dream Team’ as Father Kent labeled it had to work together to try and discover what paranormal shenanigans was going on in the haunted mansion.

The ensemble cast was the strength of the film. Haddish, Stanfield, DeVito, Dawson, and Wilson were all very funny and worked well together. The film also gave time to the characters, trying to give them more than just a plot driven movie. I really appreciated the attempt to give each character (or most of them at least) more depth than you would expect. There were even some solid emotional moments that were more effective because the characters had some heft to them.

The CGI was fine, but nothing that I would write home about. The side ghosts were scary designs that would probably frighten younger kids, but would be fine for teens.

The story was a little messy, and the film was probably too long. There were some stretches in the middle that dragged a bit and could have been edited down 10-15 minutes to make the pacing sharper. However, the beginning and ending was pretty decent and moved at a good clip.

The story arc is around grief as several of the characters had to deal with loss, especially LaKeith Stanfield, who did a fantastic job in this role.

Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis appears too as the classic Haunted mansion character Madame Leota. Jamie Lee felt a little over the top in the smaller role.

There was also a section that felt like it was AI in the middle of the film, dealing with information about what had happened. I am not sure if it was AI or if it was animated, but I did notice the section.

Haunted mansion felt like a throwback to an 80s/90s special effect/ghost movie much like Michael J. Fox’s The Frighteners or Arachnophobia. It had fun moments with a great cast. It might be a little long, but the cast is enjoyable enough to make up any of the drawbacks.

This is better than the Eddie Murphy version and should be a good time for families, especially with slightly older children.

3.4 stars