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HAUNTED MANSION – Kris Bowers
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
The latest Disney theme park property to hit big screens, hot on the heels of five Pirates of the Caribbean films, Tomorrowland, and Jungle Cruise, is Haunted Mansion. It’s the second film to be based on the wonderfully ghoulish ride after the 2003 Eddie Murphy movie which was scored by Mark Mancina, but where the first film deviated considerably from the canonical Haunted Mansion story, this one seems to be much more rooted in Disney lore. The film stars Rosario Dawson as Gabbie, a single mother who moves into a long-abandoned mansion with her teenage son, with dreams of turning it into a bed-and-breakfast – only to discover that the mansion is overrun with ghosts! At her wit’s end, the skeptical Gabbie turns to a group of psychics (Lakeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito) to help exorcise their mansion and destroy the ghosts around them. The film was directed by Justin Simien from a screenplay by Katie Dippold, and had a lot of good pre-release buzz, but unfortunately the film has been something of a commercial flop, likely due to the peculiar decision Disney took to release it in July rather than the more logical late-October. Read more…

