Disney can’t seem to get the Haunted Mansion (the title of the 2023 film inexplicably has no The in front of it) right. Even with a cast that includes no-brainers like Lakeith Stanfield, who is excellent in everything, Tiffany Haddish, Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, among others, and written by Katie Dippold, who has written very funny movies in the past, something is constantly feeling missing from Disney’s latest attempt at turning one of their theme park attractions into a feature film.

Gracie (Dawson) and her son (Chase W. Dillon) move from New York to outside of New Orleans, in the house that turns out to be the eponymous Haunted Mansion. She enlists some help on how to silence and expel these ghosts. Ben (Stanfield) is an astrophysicist grieving the death of his wife, who led a ‘ghost tour’ of New Orleans. He hosts this tour in her memory. He enlists the help of Father Kent (Wilson), a psychic (Haddish), and a professor (Danny DeVito).

The combination of the people I listed above should lead to something sure-fire funny, spooky and reliably effective. And yet, the absolute opposite occurs here.Haunted Mansion 2023 is never funny enough nor scary enough to fully leap off the screen. The story is weak, the characterizations are uninspired, the direction is flat there’s an insane level of product placement in this movie.

A word about product placement. The gang performs a séance with a vanilla bean Yankee Candle, because Rosario Dawson “keeps forgetting to cancel her Amazon subscription”. In the same scene, Tiffany Haddish invites the ghost to write a message “on this pen and pad I purchased from CVS”. LaKeith Stanfield’s wife died in a car accident because she made the wrong turn en route to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. Oh, and Rosario Dawson bought the Haunted Mansion on Zillow! It’s all Zillow’s fault! There’s more where that came from, these are just the examples I am remembering at the time I write this. It’s very strange that a Haunted Mansion movie has more egregious product placement than a Barbie movie.

I’m unfamiliar with the theme park attraction where this film finds its basis, and maybe there is more here to enjoy if you are vested in the theme park lore. But, as it stands, this venture seems plagued at the outset by a fatal sense of half-assedness. Not one actor seems excited to be here. We also have appearances by Jamie Lee Curtis, Jared Leto, Hasan Minhaj, andSchitt’s Creek’s Dan Levy, and nobody is having any fun here. Nobody is improvising and the dialogue feels very stilted. The whole thing feels very by the numbers and safe.

Justin Simien, director of good films like Dear White People and Bad Hair, seems to flinch when presented with a $150 million budget. The VFX look like crap, the whole thing is dark and dingy and you have no idea where the money went in getting this made. I would have thought this film would be incredibly cheap to make with all that product placement. Katie Dippold, writer of Paul Feig’s very funny The Heat, as well as his Ghostbusters reboot, which I will defend until my dying day, penned the screenplay. And this should seem like an easier endeavor for her as well, since she’s proven herself adept at comedy and light spookiness. And yet, I don’t think I laughed more than once or twice during the bloated two-plus-hour runtime.

Would I have given this movie a pass if it were released during Spooky Season? I honestly don’t know. Releasing a Haunted Mansion movie in the middle of July makes absolutely no damn sense from a financial perspective, since this is not the time of the year where audiences want to see movies like this. My only thought is The Mouse will be able to put this on Disney+ around late October, the only place where it might stand a chance at doing the numbers they need it to. Even last year’s Hocus Pocus 2, a Disney+ original, which was not great, is far and away better than this. I would say if you have any interest in this film, just wait to see it on Disney+ for no additional cost. It might really hit at home on a chilly night when you have nothing better to do. But as an attraction designed to make money in theaters in the middle of the summer, I have no idea what we’re doing here.