Haunted Mansion

Simple, naive, silly, formulaic and full of classic characters? Yes! But still a good family show? Yes! The new Haunted Mansion has nothing to do with the old Eddie Murphy movie (which is definitely unsurpassed, and which was absolutely excellent for its time), but it also manages to stand on its own as its own movie, and quite well. It is, in fact, pure family comedy entertainment that isn't, and doesn't try to be, anything groundbreaking, but is simply about entertaining a typical family for an evening, and it succeeds decently. Occasionally it manages a decent joke, other times it's drier, sometimes it's a classic clichéd rip-off and other times there's a nice detail, well in short a sort of inoffensive average. But what surprised me the most about the film is the age-unrestricted accessibility, because although it's still a "family-friendly fairy tale", there are an unexpected amount of "horror" scenes, jump scares (haha), and if it's okay in an accessible film to have ghosts chasing the main character with an axe in his hand trying to cut his head off (!!! :D:D), then I guess I can't complain. For kids a fine "introduction movie" to the horror genre, for adults an okay time at the cinema with the little ones. (08/07/2023)