360: Haunted Mansion

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, please make sure to go ahead and rate, review, and subscribe. Thanks.

[00:00:06] 68. Let's get to Disney's Haunted Mansion, the remake, which came out late last year.

[00:00:14] It's directed by Justin Simeon, written by, oh it's done by Katie Diphold who also wrote

[00:00:20] The Ghostbusters reboot with Kristen Wiig and The Heat, some Parks & Rack episodes.

[00:00:27] It stars Lackey Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, Danny DeVito,

[00:00:32] Jimmy Lee Curtis, Jared Leto, and few others.

[00:00:37] And the synopsis is a single mom named Gabby hires a tour guide, a psychic, a priest,

[00:00:43] and a historian to help exercise her newly bought mansion after discovering it is inhabited by ghosts.

[00:00:52] So, hot take, shame here I don't know.

[00:00:56] I haven't seen the original Haunted Mansion, I've heard of it, been meaning to get around to it but I never was really exposed to that growing up.

[00:01:04] Never really knew anyone who had mentioned it so when this one came out I don't think I'd even heard of it at the time.

[00:01:11] I probably will get around to watching it sometime in the next couple of months but that's what that is.

[00:01:17] I was curious about this one mainly because of the cast.

[00:01:20] I'm a sucker also for ghost stuff, I like ghost hunting, exploring historical locations and discovering secrets, all that sort of stuff.

[00:01:31] I'm just a sucker for it.

[00:01:33] And talking about Katie Diphold, I did like The Heat and The Ghostbusters reboot.

[00:01:39] I know some people didn't but I did.

[00:01:41] But talking about this one more specifically, I think the reviews were fairly mixed, maybe even in the negatives when this one was first released.

[00:01:50] I knew it flopped financially but I think even critically it was kind of eh.

[00:01:54] And overall I thought it was alright, I thought it was a passable entertaining charming film, I thought it looked quite good.

[00:02:02] I liked the design of the ghosts.

[00:02:04] I thought, LaKeith Stanfield is so underrated.

[00:02:07] He is so good in this way better than he needs to be and he's just great in everything but I love LaKeith Stanfield and the whole cast is excellent.

[00:02:16] But I think he makes the movie better than it would be normally I think.

[00:02:22] And so he's my favorite part of it.

[00:02:25] I like Jared Leto a lot.

[00:02:27] I say that every time there's a Jared Leto movie.

[00:02:29] I don't know why he was even in this considering he's completely covered in special effects.

[00:02:34] His voice is very much altered.

[00:02:37] You can't even tell if anybody could have played this role of the bad ghost leader.

[00:02:42] So I was kind of disappointed that he was not even really featured in one way or the other.

[00:02:48] So that was too bad but not a big deal.

[00:02:50] Everybody else very good though.

[00:02:52] Good score.

[00:02:53] I really like the look of the mansion and they really make it feel very expansive and big and it's shot well.

[00:02:59] I do find though while I like the traditional classic 80s kind of ghostbuster vibe to it,

[00:03:08] it still felt way too long like it's two hours.

[00:03:11] I think it could have lost a half an hour and would have been a better movie.

[00:03:14] It just really was spinning its wheels sometimes and there's not a lot of plot but it still felt like a little inert sometimes

[00:03:22] and by the time we got to the second act I was a little restless sometimes.

[00:03:27] But usually there'd be enough charm, some decent jokes like it.

[00:03:32] One issue is it's not as consistently funny as I think it could be and as some of Kate Dippold's other scripts are.

[00:03:41] I think the ghostbusters reboot and the heat are both funnier than this one is.

[00:03:45] But going back a little bit, I did like the very traditional feel of the movie.

[00:03:51] It doesn't feel too pandery, it just feels like it's very light on its feet and not taking things too seriously.

[00:03:58] There's not some big overarching cinematic universe going on, it's fairly self-contained so I did like that about it

[00:04:05] and that was refreshing compared to a lot of the other Disney stuff that comes out, another ghost-esque blockbusters as well.

[00:04:13] So that was nice.

[00:04:15] I do find though, even having seen it only a couple of days ago, I remember very little about it

[00:04:20] aside from certain emotional moments with Lachie Stanfield performance wise like him dealing with the loss of his wife

[00:04:26] and all that. I think that really hit harder than I thought it would so I applaud him for that.

[00:04:32] And you know I'll always watch this kind of movie being a sucker for I always will, even if they're terrible,

[00:04:39] I will watch them, I'm just personal taste, you know my cross to bear, I will watch them.

[00:04:44] I'll basically watch anything with ghosts.

[00:04:47] So you know if you need something diverting, if you want sci-fi, fantasy, ghost, bustery, sort of stories or films

[00:04:57] you could do worse than this one, I think it's alright and it does the job.

[00:05:01] Just not an amazing movie, I can see why it did flop unfortunately but it's maybe one around Halloween

[00:05:06] I could see myself going back to. It's good ones to watch with the family, I think it's one of those.

[00:05:12] So that is a heavy three out of five.