Dripping Violets

Cliche, predictable, a waste of time. What else can I say? I love horror, and while I recognize that Disney’s target audience is younger kids, I think that’s the exact reason they should have never tried to take on the horror genre. This movie is listed as “Horror/Fantasy” when it should have just been “Fantasy.” Thank god I didn’t have to pay money to see this movie, I would have walked out like everyone else did. The jump scares weren’t even that good. The most of a reaction I had to the “scares” was a tiny spike in my heartbeat. Other then that there was nothing noteworthy about it. Actual horror movies have better symbolism, and they don’t all rely on the classic details like a raven. I can’t even think of any other symbols because they were either too hard to make out and understand, or they were just so blatantly cliche that I overlooked them and looked for something better instead. This isn’t a horror movie, the only people who would be scared of this movie would be kids who’s ages are in the single digits. I don’t want to talk about the actors because they are all talented at what they do. No, I want to talk about the characters they play. Megan is portrayed as a “sassy early teen girl” and literally complained about seeing the mansion, then suddenly she’s adventurous and wants to explore the place she didn’t even want to go into? Jim didn’t even have much growth either. I couldn’t notice a shift in his behavior until the climax of the film, and that was when he was in “survival mode” and was looking for a way out. It’s been flat out displayed that he doesn’t pay attention to his kids or wife, but it’s only mentioned once before all we get are just casual mentions of the things he missed like “since when could you read Latin?” (Which Megan could coincidentally translate). These actor’s have wasted their talent when they have to play characters that hardly have anything to show for the audience. I didn’t feel bad for any of them, and hated half of them. If the characters aren’t engaging then the movie will automatically fail, even if they had written an ACTUAL good story. I know this is a reboot of the old Haunted Mansion, and I think that explains why this feels so cheap to me. So while I can understand where some parts come from, a lot of it feels like Disney tried to branch out to a different genre but put those same people who made Disney Channel original movies in charge of creating it. I can not express enough how much I hated this movie. I could go on, but I’d be explaining the entire plot and this is already too long. Don’t waste your time and brain cells if you want to watch this as a “horror” movie. You’ll only be disappointed.