Haunted Mansion (2023)

Director: Justin Simien

Starring: LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson

A single mom named Gabbie hires a tour guide, a psychic, a priest and a historian to help exorcise her newly bought mansion after discovering it is inhabited by ghosts.

The sole purpose of ‘Haunted Mansion’ is to entertain. Its not meant to be scary, or to be taken seriously.

I absolutely loved the casting in this film, so well done to the casting department! I especially enjoyed LaKeith Stanfield as the film’s lead and main protagonist Ben Matthias, who becomes the film’s unlikely and unwilling hero. At times he reminded me of a young Will Smith. I also thoroughly enjoyed Owen Wilson as fraudster, Father Kent.

Ben used to be an Astrophysicist, but now he is a haunted house tour guide. He designed a special camera to capture ghosts, but not having any success, he now doesn’t believe in ghosts. (He has a tragic back story that lead to these events.) When single mother Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase Dillon) move into a mansion – hoping to transform it into a bed and breakfast – and notice ghosts all around them, they contact Ben to assist. But when Ben visits them at the mansion, he sees no ghosts, and with his camera’s battery flat, he is unable to take photographs.

However, when Ben returns home, something followed him back, and the ghost wants him to return to the mansion. On his return, Father Kent – who experienced the same fate – is at the mansion. Soon after, a medium, Harriet (Tiffany Haddish) and haunted house historian Professor Bruce Davis (Danny de Vito) also find themselves trapped at the mansion.

And so the party decides to find out why the ghosts wanted them to return to the house. I enjoyed this mystery and investigative element as they decide to dig into the mansion’s past to find out the origin of a ghost the other ghosts fear.

‘Haunted Mansion’ is what it is: illogical, silly entertainment. The visual effects were pretty darn good. This is pure family entertainment young and old can have a good time with. I actually had a lot of fun with it.

Unfortunately, ‘Haunted Mansion’ flopped at the box office, only earning $114 million on a budget of $150 million – and apparently this excludes marketing costs. Ouch!

Would I watch it again? Oh, I’m sure I would.