Ghosted

Let me start with what we didn't watch: They Crawl Beneath (2022). I figured Ms. Spenser needed a good creature feature, so we tried this out. It's about a lame-o Bakersfield cop who hangs out with his asshoile alcoholic uncle - played by Michael Pare! - over Thanksgiving, while stressing about his hot ex (but not trying to be less of an asshole to her). While they are working underneath an old Mustang, there's an earthquake, which kills Pare and traps the cop and tears his leg up. And if that's not bad enough, huge nematodes (yep) are coming out of the ground, infinging people's liberties. We watched way too much of this, almost an hour, before we just gave up.

So we decided to watch Disney's Haunted Mansion (2023) - we haven't seen the original Eddie Murphy. This was a surprisingly good choice.

LaKeith Stanfeild is an astrophysicist, developing a camera to photograph dark matter. He meets and falls in love with a New Orleans ghost tour guide. After she dies in a car crash, he becomes bitter and depressed. He in now running her tours, hating it all, and refusing to discuss ghosts.

Meanwhile, widowed Rosario Dawson, and her cute, bowtie wearing son, move into a haunted mansion, planning to fix it up as a B&B. But it's too haunted for them and they run away (smart move, but...)

Soon, unorthodox priest Owen Wilson shows up a Stanfield's place. He wants to try to photograph the ghosts in the mansion with Stanfield's camera. He's reluctant until Wilson offers him money. He shows up and Dawson warns him not to step inside. He does anyway, and doesn't find any ghosts. But he is haunted when he get's home. You see, once you set foot in the mansion, the ghosts follow you everywhere. That's why Dawson is back at the mansion.

So Wilson decides to gather a Dream Team of ghostologists, including psychic Tiffany Haddish and historian Danny Devito. Of course, he doesn't tell them about what happens when you cross the threshold...

This wasn't a laugh riot or anyrthing, but it was fun and cute. The scares are mild and the special effects mostly low-tech - which was nice for such a big movie. There are a lot of nods to the Disney ride, some of which I got, most probably not. The ghosts were not quite the characters I would have expected, except for Jamie Lee Curtis, a New Orleans spiritualist trapped in her crystal ball. Even Jared Leto as Hatbox Ghost didn't make that big an impact.

But the actors playing the main characters were all charismatic and seemed to be having a lot of fun. Wilson and Devito, in particular, seemed to be just running with it. Now I'm curious about the 2003 Eddie Murphy version.