Cinema Sunday: Haunted Mansion

Today's Cinema Sunday post is about yet another movie from THIS century, THIS summer even. 

Andrea is a big fan of nearly all things Disney and really wanted to see the new Haunted Mansion movie which is based on the famous Disney park attraction.   

So our Cinema Sunday post this week takes a look at Disney's horror/comedy, Haunted Mansion.

So let me confer with the crack writing staff for I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You. 

Yep, that's right! There is this mansion and it's haunted! 

And that my friends is Disney's horror/comedy, Haunted Mansion.

So that is that for this week's Cinema Sunday. I'll be back next week for another post about movies I have seen. 

Until then, remember to be good to one another.

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Oh, I need to provide some more detail, eh?

OK, so here's the deal, Sparky.  Andrea and I saw Haunted Mansion the week after we saw Barbie and a week before we saw Oppenheimer.  

But I wrote about Oppenheimer before I started the post on Haunted Mansion and quite frankly Oppenheimer effectively erased my brain cells of most of my recollections of Haunted Mansion. 

So I am reaching really deep here to complete my post about Haunted Mansion. 

I am reasonably sure there was a mansion.

And I do remember it being haunted. 

So I've got that going for me. 

Oh yeah. There were people in the movie.  

Let's talk about them!

Ben Matthias, an astrophysicist developing a camera to detect dark matter, meets and marries Alyssa, lover of tater tots and a ghost tour guide in New Orleans. Ben is not a believer in ghosts (or tater tots?) but he and Alyssa still fall in love and get married.

Then she dies in a car accident. Lost and forelorn, Ben takes up her ghost tour guide route even though he still doesn't believe in ghosts.

This doesn't stop Father Kent, a rather quirky and unusual priest from calling upon Ben to use his special camera to look for ghosts at Gracey Manor.

Single mom Gabbie and her son Travis moved into Gracey Manor to only find it still occupied... by ghosts! Oooooh! And the ghosts will not let them leave.

It's a fate that befalls anyone that crosses the threshold into Gracey Manor.  You can leave but you will be forcibly compelled to return.  

Harriet the psychic gets lured into the house and ultimately stuck there. Harriet is a huckster but she does possess some legit supernatural gifts. 

Prof. Bruce Davis, an elderly historian also gets looped into this (I don't know) ... haunted mansion?  

And there is the legendary medium Madame Leota who is a hundred plus years old and exists as a ghostly head in a crystal ball.  Leota provides some much needed plot exposition. 

William Gracey bought the mansion and recruited Leota to try and contact the spirit of his dead wife. It didn't work so he insisted Leota try again.

And again.

And again.  

And every night for a full year, each time failing to reach William Gracey's beloved wife but drawing in a different ghost each time. The house is packed with ghosts when the evil entity arrives.   

The Hatbox Ghost tricks William Gracey into taking his own life and traps Leota into a crystal ball.  

Hatbox Ghost is the spirit of Alistair Crump, a rich heir who killed his fellow socialites out of revenge before being beheaded himself by his servants.

Crump is one death away from obtaining his 1,000th ghost which will break the curse and unleash the Hatbox Ghost on an unsuspecting world.  

Unless our motley cast of characters can banish him first. 

Then... stuff happens. 

Epic battle between good and evil, life and death that sort of thing.  

Does everything end well?

It's a Disney film! Of course it all ends well.

Except for Alistair Crump, the Hatbox Ghost who gets sucked into Hell where he joins Scar, Clayton and other assorted Disney villains. 

But otherwise...

It's all good.

Ben adopts a cat named Tater Tot.  

OK, it may seem like I'm making light of this movie. Haunted Mansion was quite an enjoyable film.  At the very least, the film did not leave me questioning the very nature of life and the purpose of existence like Barbie did.  

Haunted Mansion was not a great movie but it wasn't a bad one and certainly deserved better than the 41% rating it got on Rotten Tomatoes.   

In a run of thought provoking movies like Oppenheimer and Barbie, Haunted Mansion may be too light, too inconsequential. But maybe it doesn't need to be more than that.  

Sometimes a movie just needs to be good dumb fun. 

After three weeks of the newest movies, Cinema Sunday next will begin a series of post on the oldest movies as I post about pre-Hays Codes films made before 1934 that I have watched.