Review: 'Haunted Mansion' shows turning Disneyland's attraction into a movie remains a bad idea, 20 years after the last time they tried it

With the box-office success of “Barbie,” Hollywood studios are once again looking to their existing intellectual property — the past books, movies, TV shows, video games, toys and other franchises — to save their financial skins.

Before the suits get too excited, though, maybe they should look at Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” as a cautionary tale of what happens with bad IP happens to good people.

This is Disney’s second attempt at making a feature-length comedy action movie based on the Disneyland attraction — and apparently there’s no one in Disney’s front office who remembers the one from 2003, starring Eddie Murphy, which was pretty terrible. (There was a Disney+ special in 2021, “Muppet Haunted Mansion,” which I’m willing to try someday because it’s the Muppets — and because it’s only 52 minutes long.)

The mansion in this telling is bought online by Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), a widowed New York doctor, who is relocating to New Orleans with her dorky 9-year-old son Travis (Chase W. Dillon). But after one night in their new house, they realize it’s haunted by a lot of ghosts — some scarier than others — and that the ghosts follow them if they leave.

Gabbie starts hunting around for someone who can handle her ghost problem. First she enlists a priest, Father Kent (Owen Wilson), who may be a little too relaxed for the job. Father Kent finds Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield), an astrophysicist who operates walking tours of haunted New Orleans landmarks — a job he took over from his wife, Alyssa (Charity Jordan), who died just after the movie’s prologue.

Ben has invented a camera that shoots spectral images that could, theoretically, capture images of ghosts.

Because of Ben’s skepticism, and whole grief-stricken vibe, Gabbie and Father Kent find more people to help: Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), a medium who knows a bit about spells, and Prof. Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito), a historian who knows about New Orleans’ ghostly real estate doings. It’s through Harriet that the group meets Madame Leota (Jamie Lee Curtis), a disembodied head in a crystal ball who knows the spell that could end the haunting — and bring down the malicious Hatbox Ghost (played by Jared Leto, under a lot of prosthetics and computer animation). 

The screenplay, by Katie Dippold (“Ghostbusters: Answer the Call”), hits all the familiar touchstones of the Disneyland ride — the hitchhiking ghosts, the ghost-filled ballroom, the stretchy living room, and so on. What’s missing is a plot that connects those ideas coherently, or characters we should care about as they run through the story’s machinations.

Meanwhile, director Justin Simien is hamstrung in his first major studio assignment, and brings none of the comic timing he showed in his indie debut, the 2014 college satire “Dear White People.” It doesn’t help that the actors don’t connect, and give the impression that they were randomly kidnapped from the same Hollywood party and are being forced to finish the movie before they can see their families again.

The movie does end, in a murky storm of computer effects. Where “Haunted Mansion” fails to generate laughs, it does evoke feelings of terror — mostly the fear that Disney will trot out this IP again in 20 years.

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‘Haunted Mansion’

★1/2

Opens Friday, July 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and scary action. Running time: 123 minutes.