In Review: 'Haunted Mansion,' 'Talk to Me'

Moviegoers have two different types of spooky movies to choose from this week.

Haunted Mansion
Dir. Justin Simien
123 min.

Opening in 1969 in Disneyland with additional versions appearing at Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland over the years, The Haunted Mansion has entertained countless theme park-goers by striking an unlikely but successful balance between the spooky and the silly. From the morbid joke tombstones in the queue to the warning that ghosts like to follow their visitors home, the ride is unapologetically macabre, but who could get too scared of all those round-faced, mostly jolly restless spirits? They are, as the song puts it, grim, grinning ghosts. Get you a dark attraction that can do both.

Can a Haunted Mansion movie do both? This second attempt is more successful than 2003’s The Haunted Mansion (the “the” presumably dropped because it’s cleaner), but it struggles to find a personality beyond the ride’s familiar setting and inhabitants. Written by Katie Dippold (The Heat, Ghostbusters) and directed by Justin Simien (Dear White People), the film admirably attempts to inject some heart into its haunted house story and benefits from a fun cast, but ultimately devolves into a noisy ghost parade.

LaKeith Stanfield stars as Ben, an astrophysicist turned New Orleans tour guide who’s struggling to get past the death of his wife. He’s still languishing when Kent (Owen Wilson), a priest of dubious morals, recruits him for the supernatural investigation of a crumbling mansion outside city limits. Seems that its new owner Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase W. Dillon) started to encounter unwanted housemates from the moment they moved in. (In one of the film’s best gags, Gabbie immediately believes her son and decides to move out. It doesn’t stick.)

When local historian Bruce (Danny De Vito) and psychic Harriet (Tiffany Haddish) join the investigation (with some help from the disembodied head of Jamie Lee Curtis’s Madame Leota), the film turns into a kid-friendly riff on The Haunting of Hill House (complete with one of the stars of its 1999 adaptation). It’s a fun set-up, but the film never really delivers on it, languishing as it gets bogged down in lore around the Mansion’s Big Bad, the Hatbox Ghost (Jared Leto), who needs to add just one more soul to his collection of 999 to reach the magic number of 1000. Stanfield and Dillon have the best moments, as they bond over their respective losses and being misfit weirdos, but the film struggles to expand on the spirit of the ride even as it imitates its details. It’s kind of spooky, kind of silly, and only kind of OK. —Keith Phipps

The Haunted Mansion opens for visitors tonight.

Talk to Me
Dir. Danny and Michael Philippou
95 min.

In the South Australian suburb that serves as the setting for Talk to Me, the kids are going nuts for a wild new party game, if “game” is the right word. It’s pretty simple: after gathering in a circle, one partygoer holds a ceramic hand. (It’s rumored to house a real embalmed hand but nobody can say for sure.) When the partygoer says the words “talk to me,” they, and they alone, can see a hideous ghostly spirit. When they then say “I let you in,” the spirit takes over their body to the horrified delight of any phone-wielding onlookers ready to post the moment online. After a fellow partygoer ends the possession before the 90 seconds widely believed to be the max before any real trouble begins (if they can), the process begins again. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer is, of course, a lot. But the kids won’t realize this until they push it too far. That’s true even for those who try to take every precaution going into the encounter with the beyond. The otherwise responsible teen Mia (Sophie Wilde) gives it a go with no immediate consequences, but when Mia and her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) bring in Jade’s younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) at a follow-up party at Jade’s house, the evening takes a turn for the worse. What’s more, Mia may not have gotten off so easy, either. Having exceeded the 90-second limit, she’s now troubled by disturbing dreams and visions, developments that might be connected to her mother’s death and a loss that still haunts her (in the metaphorical sense of the word, though now maybe in the more literal sense as well).

The feature debut of Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou, Talk to Me is at its best when working as a supernatural twist on a familiar tale of unsupervised youth and peer pressure gone amok. The possession experience maps easily onto drug use (the experience is apparently quite a rush) but also any other kind of risky behavior undertaken to impress peers or for online clout. (The Philippous were previously best known for the pranks-and-parodies YouTube channel they ran under the name RackaRacka.) Though consistently stylish, Talk to Me is less effective as it drifts away from that set-up into the realm of a more conventional spookshow in which Mia struggles to untangle herself and friends from the restless spirits they’ve let creep into their world. Still, it’s an impressive debut made even better by Wilde’s intense performance and the decision to film in the multicultural middle-class Australian suburbs rather than some anonymous North American anywhere. After all, restless spirits can be found anywhere someone’s willing to open the door for them and worry about any fallout later. —Keith Phipps

Talk to Me takes possession of theaters tonight.