Five Ways That The Haunted Mansion Movie Didn’t Work As An Adaption…
…and one way it actually did.
Anyone who knows me well will know about my obsessive love for The Haunted Mansion. In a roundabout way, it stems from that old Disneyland Fun! VHS I had when I was a kid – a few years back I found it while clicking around YouTube, fell in love with Grim Grinning Ghosts once more then went on a ‘Related Videos’ binge all night. By morning, I was a converted Mansionite. So when I found out there was a film made in 2003, I wanted to watch it.
One DVD later, I discovered that the film failed. Badly. It’s not especially well-liked within the Haunted Mansion fandom and didn’t do especially great at the box office either. And with good reason! It was just Disney attempting to cash in on the success of Pirates of the Caribbean with more ride-to-film adaptions.
So I, in all my geekery, will here attempt to write up my thoughts on why the movie, for me at least, fails at its job of adapting the Haunted Mansion ride for the big screen in five points – and one point of how I feel that it does work, at least a little bit.
