Enchanted Mansion

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Directed by Justin Simien

Cast: LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito

Production: USA, 2023. Comedy

Haunted house movies can aim to be scary or, on the contrary, to make you laugh. Of the two options, cinema has given hundreds of examples since its origins. On the comic side, two geniuses of French silent cinema, one in front of the camera (Max Linder) and one behind it (Abel Gance), perpetrated in 1924 Au secours! , a short and imaginative piece, almost experimental. De genuflexion is one of the many existing versions of The cat and the canary, the one by Paul Leni from 1927, which would spread influences; for example, already in sound cinema, El caserón de las sombras, a little gem by the inclining James Whale.

The audience had a great time with these scary fantasies sprinkled with humor. And with the parodies of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, couples prone to tremble like custards in dark and dark palaces. The fountain has never stopped working: in more recent times, brilliant titles such as Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice or Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners (here renamed Agárrame esos fantasmas) have kept alive a flame that refuses to be extinguished – if Haunted Mansion perpetuates this tradition, albeit from a decidedly limited artistic level. It is a Disney product with a vocation for blockbuster production but looks close to a B-movie devoid of the appeal that B-movies used to have, an effect that reinforces the presence of stars in low hours such as Owen Wilson , Danny DeVito or Jamie Lee Curtis (despite the Oscar this year).

Inspired by a popular attraction in its theme parks (the easy and usual resource of the house, from the Pirates of the Caribbean saga to Jungle cruise, passing through Tomorrowland), it describes the efforts of a tenant and three experts (a priest, a medium and a historian) to make the specters that live in the mansion disappear. Elementary in all its parts, but it is not a work to be despised: the festive tone, the fast pace, some witty lines of dialogue and the crazy final scene, with all the ghosts at war, make it much more presentable than the version of the same theme performed by Eddie Murphy twenty years ago. It’s like a very busy slumber party for pre-teens.