The Haunted Mansion (2003) – Review

Basing a movie on a novel or stage play would be considered to be a rather common origin for many productions while basing a movie on a theme park ride is anything but normal. Enter Disney Studios who just so happened to own the most famous theme parks in the world.  With corporate synergy being a practice this company was far from a novice at, it’s no surprise they’d try and capitalize on some of their favourite park attractions by basing a movie on one of their more popular attractions. Disney’s The Haunted Mansion was not the first such movie, with a made-for-television movie based on The Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror and the abysmal Country Bear Jamboree preceding it by a few years, but at least The Haunted Mansion tried to create a functional plot with characters that weren’t pure nightmare fuel. Granted, some of Eddie Murphy’s comedy in this film is nightmarish in its own way.

Right off the bat, Disney’s The Haunted Mansion saddles us with one of the worst clichés to ever plague a Hollywood script: the workaholic dad who puts his career ahead of his family, and in this case, it’s Jim Evers (Eddie Murphy ), a successful realtor who will blow off his own wedding anniversary dinner on the off chance of landing a new client. His wife Sara (Marsha Thomason), who is the other half of Evers and Evers Realty, is understandably upset with her work-obsessed husband, as are his two children: thirteen-year-old Megan (Aree Davis) and ten-year-old Michael (Marc John Jefferies), who see less and less of their father. Considering the fact that their father is a grinning dickhead, I would consider them both to be rather lucky on this front.

They should be happy he’s not taking them to Daddy Day Camp.

In an attempt to make amends for missing his anniversary, he suggests taking the whole family on a vacation to a nearby lake; that is, until a conveniently timed phone call informs him that the owner of Gracey Manor, a prestigious mansion in the Louisiana Bayou district, wishes to sell and wants to meet with his wife. Sara is told that she is the only one the owner desires to speak with but “Dad of the Year” decides to take the whole family along and make this “an adventure,” one that will take “twenty minutes, tops.” Needless to say, things do not go as planned and before you can say, “The road is washed out,” the Evers family is trapped in what is soon revealed to be a decidedly haunted house.

Who would have guessed this place was haunted?

The key problem I had with this movie is that it would have worked so much better as a straight-up scary movie for younger audiences; you don’t need Eddie Murphy mugging at the camera when you have amazing production designs by John Myhre, who gives us a gorgeously spooky mansion to wander through, as well as some brilliant nods to the Disney attraction and some delightfully frightful ghosts. Having Murphy bumbling around such sinister surroundings is akin to casting Abbott and Costello to star in Kubrick’s The Shining. I’m not saying you couldn’t make a decent comedy out of The Haunted Mansion, I’m just not sure there was a good reason to try. Now, if one were hell-bent on going in that direction, a better blend of dark comedy would have been needed for it to work. Instead, we get a goofy-ass mystery that makes little to no sense.

“Keep looking, the plot has to be here somewhere.”

And what mystery must our intrepid band of mortals uncover? The plot of this particular Haunted Mansion borrowed a few elements from the Paris version of the ride, which was about a doomed bride and groom, but they also threw in a ridiculous curse that makes the one from Beauty and the Beast seem reasonable by comparison. Turns out that back in the late 1800s, a wealthy Louisiana landowner named Edward Gracey (Nathaniel Parker) had fallen in love with Elizabeth Henshaw (Marsha Thomason), a multiracial servant in his grand manor house. However, when he receives a “Dear John” letter — which for some strange reason she followed up with a suicide via poisoning — he hangs himself in despair. Now, according to a prophecy, given by the floating head of Madame Leota (Jennifer Tilly), only the reuniting of Gracey and Elizabeth can lift the curse. The question is: What bloody curse is everyone talking about? Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t a curse have to be laid by somebody? If so, who in the hell cursed Gracey Manor? Was there a deleted scene revealing that after the “double suicide” Madame Leota cast the curse? We later learn that Elizabeth didn’t actually commit suicide, but was murdered by the family butler, Ramsley (Terence Stamp), who killed her to prevent Gracey from abandoning his heritage; so did he cast the curse?

That’s right, the butler did it. So old a cliché that even the film mocks it.

Or was the curse cast by the vengeful spirit of Elizabeth Henshaw? Though that seems rather out of character, as she didn’t come across as the evil vengeful type, death can leave one a little bitter. And good ol’ Ramsley seemed very motivated in getting the curse lifted, tricking and blackmailing Sara into marrying Gracey, so his being behind the curse doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. That just leaves Madame Leota and the servants (Wallace Shawn and Dina Spybey-Waters ) as curse-laying suspects, yet they had even less of a reason to curse the household than that asshat Ramsley had.

“That’s inconceivable!”

Did I mention that “everyone” believed Sara to be Gracey’s reincarnated lost love? Yep, they bring out that old chestnut, but even though she is the spitting image of the dearly departed Elizabeth she isn’t actually the reincarnated spirit of anybody. The spirit of Elizabeth was actually floating around the mansion as a glowing orb for some reason, so her resembling Elizabeth was just a case of Ramsley noticing the likeness from one of the “Evers and Evers” real estate flyers and then luring her down to the manor for a visit. Whether or not Ramsley believed her to be the reincarnated Elizabeth is never made clear, but if he knew Sara was simply a look-a-like, was he hoping that a dead-ringer would fool the curse?

Maybe it was one of those non-specific curses?

Stray Observations:

• If the ghosts in this mansion were so volatile as to even attack random kids trying to deliver flyers to this place, it would have attracted a lot more attention from paranormal investigators.
• Sara is rather blasé over the mansion’s clearly padlocked gate suddenly opening of its own volition. This is the point where I’d be turning the car around and heading home.
• In the 1983 stand-up comedy special Eddie Murphy: Delirious, Murphy stated that black people wouldn’t be dumb enough to hang around a haunted house. Clearly, 1980s Eddie Murphy would never have set foot in The Haunted Mansion.
• We see several medieval figures, including an armoured knight, within the mansion’s cemetery, but why would such individuals be buried in a private family cemetery in 1880s Louisiana? The premise of The Haunted Mansion ride was that Walt Disney collected ghosts from all over the world, but that is not the premise behind this movie.
• The film dances lightly around the reason why Ramsley was against the marriage, and her being black is never stated outright as the cause. I guess you can’t have overt racism in a Disney film.
• Jim Evers is able to acrobatically fight his way through a hallway of animated suits of armour. Was there a deleted scene revealing he was a retired ninja?
• The film’s opening prologue looks more akin to the masquerade from The Phantom of the Opera than it does a haunted mansion movie.

“Please ensure that Box Five is set aside for Eddie Murphy.”

The original theme park attraction basically had two key parents in its creation: two Disney Imagineers who had very differing opinions on what such a haunted house should entail. First, there was Disney background artist Claude Coates, who envisioned a scary adventure with moody surroundings like endless hallways, corridors of doors, and numerous characterless environments, and on the other side of the family, there was Marc Davis, one of Disney’s premier animators and one of the revered Nine Old Men, who thought the ride should be silly and full of gags and goofy characters. In the end, both artists got their ways as animator, and top Imaginer, Francis Xavier Atencio combined both their approaches and ideas thus creating a transition from dark and foreboding to “spirited” entertainment. Sadly, the movie failed at creating any semblance of such a blend of horror and comedy, as it’s mostly a comedy with just the random element of horror popping up — and I do mean horrifying elements.

When effects artist Rick Baker’s zombies show up, most kiddies will shit their drawers.

Disney’s The Haunted Mansion is not the worst ride-based movie out there; hell it’s not even the worst haunted house movie, but the comedy on hand mostly falls flat and the story itself makes little to no sense. It’s possible that this film could work as an introduction to the horror film genre for younger viewers — though that zombie sequence could cause some nightmares — and even adults can get some enjoyment by picking out all the nods to the park attraction it was based on and the grim grinning ghosts who come out to socialize, but overall, it’s a largely disappointing ordeal.

Note: With Disney currently in full-on remake mode, they should take a look at giving this ride another shot at a film adaptation.