HAUNTED MANSION : Tuesday 12th September 2023

I saw the PG Rated 'HAUNTED MANSION' this week, and this American supernatural horror comedy film is Directed by Justin Simien in only his third feature film making outing following his debut in 2014 with 'Dear White People' and then 'Bad Hair' in 2020. This is the second cinematic adaptation of Walt Disney's theme park attraction 'The Haunted Mansion' following the 2003 film of the same name which although it was panned by critics at the time grossed US$183M off the back of a production budget of US$90M. This film has however, done the opposite garnering mixed reviews and having so far grossed US$106M off the back of a US$157M production budget making it a Box Office failure. It saw its World Premiere screening at the Anaheim Disneyland theme park in California in mid-July before its release in the US at the end of July and here in Australia from the end of August.

The film opens with Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield), an astrophysicist who has worked on the development of a camera to film dark matter. He meets and marries Alyssa, a ghost tour guide, and becomes captivated by her belief in the supernatural, although he remains a firm non-believer himself. After Alyssa dies in a car accident, Ben gives up his career and continues to run her ghost tour in New Orleans, although his mind and his heart is barely in the work which he does mostly for the money.

Fast forward a few years and recently widowed doctor Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her nine year old son Travis (Chase W. Dillon) move from New York into the run down Gracey Manor in New Orleans with plans to renovate and upgrade it in order to turn it into a bed and breakfast, only to learn on the first night that it is haunted with an array of ghosts. 

Ben is later visited by priest and exorcist Father Kent (Owen Wilson) who hires him to photograph the ghosts at Gracey Manor. Ben is initially reluctant but goes through the motions for an upfront cash payment from Gabbie of US$2K, until he returns to his home and is followed there by a ghost Mariner who forces him to return to Gracey Manor. Upon his re-arrival Ben learns that Gabbie, Travis, and Kent have also fallen victim to hauntings, forcing them to also stay in the mansion. 

Ben and Kent go off in search of a medium and recruit Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), a psychic with seemingly genuine abilities, and steal blueprints to the mansion from haunted house historian Prof. Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito). Upon examining the blueprints back at the manor the assembled group locate a hidden seance room. Harriet is able to contact the spirit of Gracey (J. R. Adduci) who leaves a written message instructing them to talk to the legendary medium Madame Leota. Upon trying to do so, a mysterious entity forces Harriet out of the house and when Bruce arrives shortly afterwards he too is ousted from the house in the same manner as Harriet, resulting in him being admitted to hospital for a pre-existing heart condition he has. When a number of ghosts run amok at the hospital, Bruce, Gabbie and Ben get the hell outta there and make back to the manor. 

The group stays at the manor where they proceed to look for Leota's ghost. Ben ventures up into the roof space which contains all manner of old relics, ornaments and bric-a-brac where he runs into conflict with a ghostly bride, but finds a locked trunk that is shaking violently. Upon exiting the attic very unceremoniously and thereafter examining the contents of said trunk, they find a large crystal ball in which is trapped Madame Leota (Jamie Lee Curtis). 

Leota explains that William Gracey purchased the mansion and recruited Leota to try and contact the spirit of his dead wife Eleanor every night for a full year, releasing hundreds of wayward ghosts into the manor. An evil entity then tricked Gracey into taking his own life and trapped Leota inside her crystal ball. Harriet attempts to perform a reverse seance for more answers but winds up giving Ben an out of body experience in which he comes across Gracey and the evil entity, known as the Hatbox Ghost (Jared Leto). 

After Ben returns to the here and now, the next day Bruce takes Ben to get a Police sketch artist to draw up the Hatbox Ghost. He is identified as Alistair Crump, a rich heir who was abused by his father after his mother's death and eventually expelled from the home. Upon reaching adulthood and becoming successful himself, he killed his socialite friends out of revenge for being shunned by society, before being beheaded himself by his team of rebellious servants. 

The ghost of Crump proceeds to lock the mansion down but Ben, Kent, and Travis are able to escape. They find Crump Manor which is located only about an hour away, which has become a historical site and they join a tour of the house hoping to find an artifact that actually belonged to Crump. They learn from the Mariner (who followed them) that Crump needs someone to sacrifice their life and become the mansion's one-thousandth spirit in order to escape the mansion. Travis locates Crump's hat in a makeshift graveyard under the floorboards of the mansion, which they need to use as part of a ritual to banish Crump back to the afterlife.

The three make it back to the Gracey Manor where Ben and Kent rescue Gabbie, Harriet, and Bruce, but Crump burns the hat and plans to use Travis' grief over the death of his father to have him come to the other side and be the one-thousandth spirit. Ben finds Travis and manages to convince him to let go of his father as they and Gabbie confront Crump in the graveyard. 

Kent manages to convince the other ghosts to turn on Crump and join forces with them, and Bruce hands a remnant of the hat plucked from the fire to Harriet, who recites Leota's incantation to banish Crump, but needs to do so several times as Crump is not going down easily. Crump, as he is gradually getting sucked down into the depths of hell, attempts to get Ben to give up his life willingly to see Alyssa again, but Ben says that he is at peace with losing Alyssa before kicking Crump in the face and sending him back to the underworld. Many of the ghosts decide to remain at the mansion, now living in harmony with Gabbie and Travis. Harriet regains her full psychic abilities, Kent is ordainment as a real priest, and Bruce maintains his new friendships. Ben goes back to teaching and adopts a stray cat named Tater Tot, a nod to his wife's love for the Burger King snack. The group all join together the following Halloween for a party at the manor with the merry ghosts. 

'Haunted Mansion' is a mediocre offering from the Mouse House at best and at worst it failed to raise any laughs, has a half baked storyline, and has visual effects that seem plucked out of the 1980's 'Ghostbusters' movies and Peter Jackson's 1996 offering 'The Frighteners'. To me it seemed that in spite of the best intentions by Director Justin Simien and a top notch cast, this film seemed like a cash grab for Disney Studio's looking for a big pay day off the back of one of their more successful theme park rides while targeting a whole new audience of tweens and teens unfamiliar with the 2003 film or the ride itself, which perhaps in the final analysis will sell more tickets to Disneyland, and hence job done as a lost leader!

'Haunted Mansion' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

 

What's new in Odeon's this week : Thursday 31st August 2023.

The 80th Venice International Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday 30th August and runs through until Saturday 9th September. The aim of the Festival is to raise awareness and promote international cinema in all its forms as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue. The Festival also organises retrospectives and tributes to major figures as a contribution towards a better understanding of the history of cinema.

This years Opening Film will be 'Comandante' from Italy and Written and Directed by Edoardo De Angelis and telling the story of an episode during the Battle of the Atlantic, when the Italian submarine Comandante Cappellini sunk the Belgian ship Kabalo, and Cappellini's commander Salvatore Todaro decided to disobey orders and to rescue the Kabalo's crew, being forced to navigate in emersion for three days, making the ship an easy target for enemies. The Closing Film is 'Society of the Snow' from Spain, Uruguay and Chile and Co-Written and Directed by J.A. Bayona and is about the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster. 

This years main competition is presided over by Damien Chazelle, aided by other members of the jury including Jane Campion, Mia Hansen-Love, Martin McDonagh and Laura Poitras. Those films selected for the main international competition, of which there are twenty-three titles this year, include :-

* 'Comandante' - from Italy and Written and Directed by Edoardo De Angelis.

* 'Dogman' - from France, this action drama film is Written and Directed by Luc Besson. World Premiere.

* 'Ferrari' - from the USA, this biographical drama film is Co-Produced and Directed by Michael Mann with Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Jack O'Connell and Patrick Dempsey. World Premiere.

* 'The Killer' - from the USA, this psychological action thriller is Directed by David Fincher and stars Michael Fassbender, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard and Tilda Swinton. World Premiere.

* 'Maestro' - from the USA, this biographical drama film is Co-Written, Co-Produced, Directed and stars Bradley Cooper as the famed American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1990 aged 72, with Carey Mulligan as his Costa Rican Actress wife Felicia Montealegre, Maya Hawke as Jamie Bernstein and Sarah Silverman as Shirley Bernstein. World Premiere.

* 'Memory' - from Mexico and the USA, this drama film is Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Michel Franco and stars Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard and Merritt Wever. World Premiere.

* 'Origin' - from the USA and Written for the screen, Co-Produced and Directed by Ava DuVernay and stars Aunjanue Ellis, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Nick Offerman and Connie Neilsen. World Premiere.

* 'Poor Things' - from Ireland, the UK and the USA and Co-Produced and Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, and stars Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Abbott, Margaret Qualley and Jerrod Carmichael. World Premiere.

* 'Priscilla' - from the USA and is Written for the screen, Co-Produced and Directed by Sofia Coppola and stars Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla Presley and Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley. World Premiere.

Italian Director Liliana Cavani and Hong Kong Actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai will both receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement during the festival.

Foe all the details of the other film strands and awards being presented at this years 80th Venice International Film Festival, you can go to the official website at : https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2023

This week with seven new movies to tempt you out to your local big screen Odeon there is sure to be something for everyone in this weeks line up, kicking off with the third and final offering in this vigilante action thriller that sees our titular hero retired to Southern Italy where he must take on the Sicilian mob in order to protect his new found friends. Next up we have a horror comedy offering based on a popular theme park ride that sees a woman and her son enlist a motley crew of so-called spiritual experts to help rid their home of supernatural squatters. This is followed by a romantic drama film about a reunion between two childhood friends as they contemplate their relationship and their own lives. Then we turn to a German offering that sees emotions run high as a group of friends gather in a holiday home by the Baltic Sea as the parched forest around them catches fire. Following this, a retired sea captain and his daughter must reassess their strained relationship after he begins a new romance with a widowed housekeeper. And we close out the week with a pair of documentaries - the first from France that follows patients and caregivers at a psychiatric centre with a unique floating structure located in the middle of the River Seine in central Paris; and the second an Aussie doco about a legend of the Australian music scene who formed his own record label in 1972 and went on to promote local, national and international music artists to the world right up to his passing aged 68 in 2021.

Whatever your taste in big screen film entertainment is this week - be it any of the seven latest release new films as Previewed below, or those doing the rounds currently on general release or as Reviewed and Previewed in previous Blog Posts here at Odeon Online, you are most welcome to share your movie going thoughts, opinions and observations by leaving your relevant, succinct and appropriate views in the Comments section below this or any other Post. We'd love to hear from you, and in the meantime, enjoy your big screen Odeon outing during the coming week.

'THE EQUALIZER 3' (Rated MA15+) - this American action thriller film is Directed and Co-Produced by Antoine Fuqua and is the sequel to 2018's 'Equalizer 2' and the third and final instalment in the 'Equalizer' trilogy. Those first two films, also Directed by Antoine Fuqua grossed US$383M off the back of combined production budgets of US135M, and is loosely based on the TV series which ran for a total of eighty-eight episodes over four seasons from 1985 through until 1989 and starred Edward Woodward as the titular Equalizer, Robert McCall. 

Here then, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington reprising his role from the previous two instalments and who also Co-Produces here), since giving up his life as a Government assassin, moves to Southern Italy to escape from the horrifying things he's done in the past, but later discovers that his new friends are under the control of the Sicilian Mafia crime bosses. As events turn deadly, Robert unleashes his very particular set of skills to protect his new friends. The film also stars Dakota Fanning and David Denman, and is released Stateside this week too. 

'HAUNTED MANSION' (Rated PG) - is an American supernatural horror comedy film Directed by Justin Simien in only his third feature film making outing following his debut in 2014 with 'Dear White People' and then 'Bad Hair' in 2020. This is the second cinematic adaptation of Walt Disney's theme park attraction 'The Haunted Mansion' following the 2003 film of the same name which although it was panned by critics at the time grossed US$183M off the back of a production budget of US$90M. This film has however, done the opposite garnering mixed reviews and having so far grossed US$80M off the back of a US$157M production budget making it a Box Office failure. Here then, a recently-widowed doctor Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase W. Dillon) move from New York into Gracey Manor, New Orleans with the view of turning it into a bed and breakfast, only to learn that it is haunted with ghosts. Gabbie hires a tour guide, a psychic, a priest and a historian to help exorcise her newly bought mansion. Also starring LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jared Leto and Tiffany Haddish.

'PAST LIVES' (Rated M) - this American romantic drama film is Written and Directed by Celine Song in her feature film Directing debut. The film saw its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival toward the end of January this year and was released in the US in early June having received universal critical acclaim and so far grossing US$11M at the Box Office. Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are separated after Nora's family emigrates from South Korea. Some twenty years later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life. Starring Greta Lee as the adult Nora, Teo Yoo as the adult Hae Sung and John Magaro as Arthur, Nora's husband. 

'AFIRE' (Rated MA15+) - this German drama film is Written and Directed by Christian Petzold who made his feature film Directorial debut in 2000 with 'The State I Am In' and he would follow this up with the likes of 'Yella' in 2007, 'Jerichow' in 2008, 'Transit' in 2018 and 'Undine' in 2020. This film won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it had its World Premiere in late February this year before its release in Germany at the back end of April, having generated universal critical acclaim and US$1.5M so far at the Box Office. In a holiday cottage on the Baltic Sea not far from Ahrenshoop in north east Germany in a hot, dry summer, a group of four friends get together. There is a forest fire nearby and slowly and unnoticeably they are enclosed by the walls of flame. Trapped, they get closer, and then the desire, love and sex overtakes them. 

'MY SAILOR, MY LOVE' (Rated PG) - is a Finnish, Irish and Belgian Co-Produced drama film Directed by Klaus Haro whose prior feature film credits include 'Elina' in 2003, 'Mother of Mine' in 2005, 'Letters to Father Jacob' in 2009 and 'The Fencer' in 2015. Howard (James Cosmo), a retired sea captain and widower lives in a house by the sea and refuses any help from his adult daughter Grace (Catherine Walker). When she hires Annie (Brid Brennan) as domestic help for him, the reclusive and stubborn Howard unexpectedly falls in love. Grace has her own crisis to unravel and finds her father's romance difficult. Annie must face the complex father-daughter relationship, while Howard and Grace must realise their own imperfections. The film has generated largely positive critical reviews. 

'ON THE ADAMANT' (Rated MA15+) - this French language documentary film is Directed and photographed by Nicolas Philibert. It won the Golden Bear at this years Berlin International Film Festival, where it saw its World Premiere at the end of February this year. The film is a portrait of the L'Adamant Day Centre in Paris, France - a floating building located at the foot of the Charles de Gaulle Bridge on the right bank of the River Seine. The unique daycare centre welcomes adults with mental disorders and offers patients a daily routine that is structured in terms of time and space and helps them to regain their footing in everyday life with therapeutic workshops and psychosocial rehabilitation support. The Adamant team consists of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists, specialist educators, psychomotor specialists, care coordinators, hospital staff, and various external artists and art therapists. The film has received generally favourable reviews and was released in its native France in mid-April.

'EGO : THE MICHAEL GUDINSKI STORY' (Rated M) - is an Australian documentary film Directed by Paul Goldman whose prior feature film credits take in his debut in 2002 with 'Australian Rules' which he would follow up with the likes of 'All the Way' in 2003, 'Suburban Mayhem' in 2006 plus a bunch of music videos for Jason Donovan, Kylie Minogue, Danii Minogue, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Ross Wilson, and a couple of music doco's since. This film charts the life and times of Michael Gudinski who was an Australian record executive and promoter and a leading figure in the Australian music industry. In 1972 he formed the highly successful Australian record company Mushroom Records through which he signed several generations of Australian musicians and performers ranging from MacKenzie Theory, the Skyhooks, The Choirboys, Kylie Minogue, and New Zealand's Split Enz to newer artists such as Eskimo Joe, Evermore and others. The film includes commentary from Kylie Minogue, Dave Grohl, Sting, Jimmy Barnes, Ed Sheeran, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. Gudinski was considered to be 'one of the most significant and powerful players' in the Australian music landscape. The film saw its World Premiere showcasing at the Melbourne International Film Festival earlier this month. Gudinski died on 2nd March 2021, aged 68.

With seven new release movie offerings this week to tempt you out to your local Odeon, remember to share your movie going thoughts with your other like minded cinephile friends afterwards here at Odeon Online. In the meantime, I'll see you sometime somewhere at your local Odeon in the week ahead.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-