Jamie
Yo yo yo, ghost house with the most house! This movie isn’t really meant to be scary. Or at least I hope not. It’s for little kids. Sure there can be some spooky looking ghost and some kids might not like that, but I remember liking ghostbusters as a kid and that has a load of crazy, creepy ghosts everywhere. That can be fun. So creepy stuff? Yes. Actually scary? No. It did get me thinking whether I’ve ever seen a scary ghost movie. While I’m not a horror fanatic in part because I do get creeped out by them on occasion, those occasions in reality are pretty rare. Insidious? The Conjuring? Those spookify me for sure. But a ghost film? I’d have to say the scariest ghost film I’ve ever seen is… Ghost. Because isn’t the scariest thing in this world lost love? Awwww.
To recap, Ben is a super genius mourning his lost love. One day he is called upon by Kent, a priest who heard he invented a camera that can see ghosts. In need of some cash he agrees to head out to a mansion owned by Gabbie and Travis and take some pictures. Once inside, though, he is dismayed to find that not only are ghosts real, but by stepping inside he is now haunted. Uh oh! Soon they are gathering a whole gang together to figure out what’s going on with this haunting. You ready? Turns out that a man named William Gracey summoned all the ghosts there in a futile attempt to talk to his dead wife. This included Alistair Crump, a super evil ghost aiming to collect enough souls to escape back to the world of the living. He just needs one more soul (bum bum bum) and the soul has to go willingly. But who could be mourning someone they lost so much that they would give into that?… who could it be? Hmmmmm. Oh right, our main character. Anyway, they track down all the clues and find Crump’s hat, which serves as a “possession” that they can use to destroy him. But they quickly realize that Ben’s not the only one in mourning. Travis lost his dad and almost gives into Crump, but Ben rescues him. Then Ben is lured to the edge of giving into his grief, but ultimately flips it on Crump and kicks him back into the underworld. The house is exorcized and Ben and Gabbie smooch. THE END.
Haunted Mansion is a long and kind of boring movie. I think it suffers mostly by leaning too heavily on a cast that just can’t hold your attention through a flimsy script. At times it appeared like they were improvising a la Curb Your Enthusiasm. Often scenes would just end with a character saying they should look in the attic or something with no prompting or reason, as if they plumb forgot to improvise that part. Patrick is right, they should have had them do a seance or something to try to get a ghost to help them in battle and instead they get a bumbling coward ghost. Something fun to look at and to give us some laughs and to help the story from point A to point B. Anyway, the one highlight of the film is that the ending is very sweet and emotional. I actually had tears in my eyes (no lie) when Travis and Ben were trying to overcome their grief and not succumb to Crump’s temptations. They find hope in friendship and family. It’s sweet. Just wish the rest was a little funnier and fun. As for Ghosted, it has the worst first 15 minutes I can remember with some truly dire Apple product placement. After that you get a solid 70 minutes of cute, kinda funny action rom com. Music was terrible and the ending did an unnecessary rip off of John Wick, so overall it kind of shook out as merely mediocre. I expected much, much worse.
Hot Take Clam Bake! They were all dead the whole time! JK, obviously the ghosts were dead. But yeah, Ben was definitely also dead the whole time. Didn’t you think it was odd when Ben taught Gabbie to sculpt oddly phallic vases in the middle of the movie? Or the unexpected money laundering plot? Or when Whoopi Goldberg showed up and won an Oscar? Alright, fine Whoopi Goldberg didn’t win an Oscar for this. She just won a Golden Globe. But the other things definitely happened. Hot Take Temperature: Ghost Fire with the Most Fire.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about the third Haunted House film and the most soulless one yet? Let’s go!
When I watched this trailer I legit thought it kind of seemed good. I liked bringing in Wilson and Devito, it seemed fun, and there is something about colorful ghosts flying around in an explicitly non-scary horror-adjacent kids film.
Watching it there is a fundamental flaw that tripped the whole movie up: too few ghosts. For the first half of the film (more honestly) you basically see no ghosts. And when you do “see” a ghost it is instead a trash non-picture produced by a magic camera.
The back half is better than the first and you can kind of see where they should have gone the whole time. Ghosts and ghosts and ghosts and ghosts. They still needed more visualization of said ghosts, but at least there were some ghosts in this haunted mansion finally.
The ending got me a bit as well. Grief, a husband mourning his wife, a child mourning his father. That’s some feelings. The whole thing resolves quite cleanly, but definitely the most fun part of the film.
Hot take: They should have had more Casper-like stuff in this. Like … a machine that makes a ghost into a human or some junk. That stuff is fun and nonsense and would be a motivation for Leto (oh yeah he’s in this movie), the kid, and the main character to maybe butt heads about who should (and whether anyone should) use the machine. Especially once they reveal that the machine must consume 1000 souls for eternity to work. See? I think I actually made this already nonsensical movie better by adding more nonsense.
This film was desperately yearning for a Planchet ghost. Alas. There is so much Product Placement (What?) in this film, it is crazy. Burger King is prominently displayed, but the vertical integration of Marvel action figures and (blurg) a Marvel Comics Monopoly set really takes the case. Setting as a Character (Where?) for New Orleans. Secret Holiday Film (When?) since the film ends on Halloween. Wild Coincidence (Why?) alert for them just so happening to stumble onto the house reaching its 1000 ghost milestone just as our heroes arrive. And naturally Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that the kid’s father has been dead the whole time. I still think this movie is closest to Good despite being kind of soulless and nonsensical, mostly due to Wilson and Devito who are just fun enough to float the more serious roles some of the others are saddled with.
For the friend this cycle we kind of had to do the biggest streaming disaster of the year. I think Ghosted fits the bill. If only this was about g-g-g-g-g-ghosts like The Haunted Mansion. Instead it is about Chris Evans’ constant pursuit of vertical integration between his Apple iPhone and Apple AirTags. Meanwhile Ana de Armas is a spy who then has to drag Evans’ clingy character around on a world tour trying to disarm a bioweapon peddled by Adrian Brody in one of two BMT performances this year (the other is the upcoming Fool’s Paradise). The film eventually gets a bit fun, but it is let down by (1) the initial scene involving the Apple advert is maybe the worst thing I’ve ever seen and instantly soured me on the film, and (2) the music is awwwwwwwwful. I’m mostly convinced the music was actually generated by an algorithm which analyzed songs that play a lot on Apple Music. The needle drops were constant and bizarre and the entire soundtrack was poppy weird inappropriate music. It was truly weird. Also weird that I can’t find a single critic who has a similar complaint, I would have thought it would stick out like a sore thumb there. Anyways, C- I think in that it is harmless, but also soulless and completely void of any reason to watch or ever think about ever again.
Might as well make a fourth one. Read about it in the Quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 