‘Haunted Mansion’ Review: Disney Jump-Starts Spooky Season

The horror-comedy “Haunted Mansion” ventures into some appropriately scary subjects: spectral possession, lethal poltergeists and the bed-and-breakfast industry. Like the Disney theme-park attraction upon which it’s based, at its best it’s entertaining in a quaint, late-’60s way, which makes it a pleasant summer surprise.

The ride was made into a movie once before: 2003’s “The Haunted Mansion,” which told a completely different story in which Eddie Murphy played a real-estate agent hoping to sell a spooky manse. The new iteration doesn’t fully renovate a creaky idea in the way that the original “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie did, and it therefore seems unlikely to generate a multibillion-dollar film franchise. Still, its throwback corniness (at one point characters trade egg puns) is appealingly contrary to the disagreeable push in Hollywood to frantically cobble together a movie composed of one blowout action scene after another.

The standout in the cast is the ever-boyish Owen Wilson as a sketchy New Orleans priest and exorcist named Father Kent who tries to help a New York doctor ( Rosario Dawson ) who has moved to the bayou with her young son, Travis (Chase W. Dillon), after buying a large, disused house she intends to turn into a B&B. A ghost infestation scuppers that plan, and when the priest proves unable to be of service, he tracks down a depressed former astrophysicist named Ben (LaKeith Stanfield) who was working on a system for photographing spectral entities but collapsed into grief after his wife died. Ben doesn’t believe in any supernatural jibber-jabber, though, and his investigation consists of pretending to take a few pictures. When he leaves, he discovers—yikes—that anyone who has crossed the threshold of the haunted mansion will forever be plagued by its resident spirits. Aided by a shady medium ( Tiffany Haddish ) who specializes in bar mitzvah soothsaying and a jittery professor ( Danny DeVito ) who studies haunted houses, the crew set about uncovering the secrets of the estate in hopes of settling the souls of the ghostly dyspeptics who moaningly wander its halls.

Mr. Wilson’s trademark loopy cheerfulness is the strongest element here. His Father Kent may not be much of a clergyman—“God, give us a break,” he says as a prayer—but he drives the plot forward with his hopeful scheming. “There are so many bad people in the world—haunt them!” he pleads with the ghosts. Mr. Stanfield also does good work, giving the movie its heart with a character arc that traces the stages of grieving, though the movie avoids being too morbid. Katie Dippold, who wrote the script, and director Justin Simien devise a neat way, involving a cat, to illustrate Ben’s recovery process. Ms. Haddish, however, one of the funniest actresses working today, doesn’t get enough opportunities, and the presence of two Oscar winners, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jared Leto, in small roles seems superfluous. Ms. Curtis (or rather her head, contained in a crystal ball) plays Madame Leota, the ghost of a psychic who explains the house’s history, and Mr. Leto, barely recognizable, is the ghost who started all the shenanigans and is responsible for the long string of murders at the house.

No one involved here, including Disney, whose marketing machine seems to have shifted into low gear for the movie, is asking us to make too much of this production, which aims only to be a passable diversion aimed mainly at little kids (and those of us old enough to remember “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” which had a similar feel and thrilled me when I was 5). I appreciated the throwback energy and old-school special effects, such as a scene in which an armchair zooms around and another in which a poltergeist interferes with breakfast by unscrewing the cap on a bottle of spices.

Like many of Disney’s superhero movies, however, “Haunted Mansion” unfortunately turns into a special-effects extravaganza in its final act, which drags on for 30 minutes or so of chaos as the humans fight off a ghost army of 999 deceased wanderers who are eager to add, under the light of a full moon, a 1,000th restless soul (though what exactly will be accomplished with that round number is left a bit vague). A movie that should have wrapped up at 100 minutes instead goes on for two hours as the script runs through seemingly made-up-on-the-fly rules about the behavior of the ghosts, who despite their homicidal reputations don’t actually seem to be trying to kill anyone. The more digital dead people crowd the screen, the less lively the story feels.