Film / Haunted Mansion (2023)

Home is where the haunt is.

"Welcome, foolish mortals, to New Orleans, a most paranormal place. Where somber funerals end in celebration. Where death is not an ending, but a new beginning, and even grief can be a doorway to joy... if one is willing to walk through it."

— Madame Leota

Haunted Mansion is a 2023 horror comedy film and the third live-action adaptation of Disney Theme Parks’ iconic ride following the 2003 film and the Muppets Haunted Mansion Halloween special. It is directed by Justin Simien, written by Kate Dippold (Ghostbusters (2016), The Heat), and starring Rosario Dawson, Chase W. Dillon, Lakeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, Dan Levy, Danny DeVito, Hasan Minhaj, with Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota, and Jared Leto as the Hatbox Ghost.

The film follows former astrophysicist Ben Matthias (Stanfield), who is unexpectedly summoned from his job keeping his late wife's ghost tour business alive by Father Kent (Wilson), a laid-back priest who brings an intriguing proposition: use the ghost-finding lens he developed for his late wife to help Gabbie (Dawson) and Travis (Dillon), a single mother and her young son who have just moved into a spooky old mansion just north of New Orleans, deal with the spectral inhabitants of their new home. When Ben finds himself drawn deeper into the mansion's ghostly secrets than he ever anticipated, he recruits the onsite help of Harriet (Haddish), a medium, and the advice of Bruce (De Vito), a history professor at Tulane who ends up joining the others at the mansion of his own accord. Together, this motley team untangle the history of Gracey Manor- and the dark spirit who wishes to master not only every ghost already in the mansion, but every mortal who enters, too.

Development on the film started in 2010, when Disney announced plans to take another whack at a Haunted Mansion movie, to be helmed by Guillermo del Toro. However, that version fell into Development Hell between del Toro's busy schedule and trying to get the right script. In 2015, it seemed to have started taking additional steps forward, with the announcement of Ryan Gosling as the star but news after that also died out. The movie in its current form was announced in 2020.

The film was released in theatres on July 28, 2023.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer

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Grim, grinning tropes come out to socialize…

• Actually Pretty Funny: As Ben tearfully recounts his favorite memories of his late wife Alyssa, Bruce (who is awaiting cardiac surgery and has matters of the heart—literally—close to the front of his mind) interrupts at a particularly emotional moment to speculate on how high Alyssa’s cholesterol must have been. Rather than offended or hurt, Ben is relieved to have something to laugh at.
• Actor Allusion: This isn't the first time Owen Wilson has starred in a movie about a haunted house.
• Adapted Out: Although several possessed busts are seen, the Singing Busts are noticeably absent from the film. They do get a reference, however, when a remix of "Grim Grinning Ghosts" is sung at the end.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The stretching room in the ride comes with narration pointing out that there are no windows or doors. The trailers show the windows and doors in the room actually disappearing into thin air.
  • As with the 2003 film, this film introduces a new crop of living characters to face off against the spirits.
• Adaptational Heroism: Constance Hatchaway was a psychopathic serial killer with zero redeeming moments in the original ride. Here, she is among the ghosts convinced by Kent to do a Heel–Face Turn.
• Adaptational Nationality: Madame Leota is usually represented as Romani, but she’s Russian in this film (probably to avoid the ongoing stereotype of Romani people as fortune-tellers and mystics). Her regalia in life◊ and when Harriet is able to temporarily free her ghost from the crystal ball is based on traditional Russian court dress.
• Adaptation Species Change: The Caretaker and his dog are the only living characters in the ride. Here they're depicted as ghosts much like the previous film.
• Adaptational Ugliness: Constance the Black Widow Bride is a beautiful Femme Fatale even in death in the ride. In this film, she has a ghoulish, decayed face and a snarling, feral personality to match.
  • In the ride, the Mummy Ghost had a much simpler appearance, while in the movie he was given a much scarier, zombie-like appearance. His wraps are even tattered in some parts, including the one on his face, which is a major change, as in the ride, his whole face is wrapped up, making his speech incomprehensible and annoying to himself and the old man ghost. Father Kent even lampshades his ugliness by telling him to turn around while he does his speech, to which he was all too willing to comply.
  • This might actually occur In-Universe for many of the ghosts while under the heel of the Hatbox Ghost, because several half-decayed ghosts start to look normal after he's been banished.
• Adaptational Villainy: The Hatbox Ghost is an enigmatic character with no clear alignment in the ride, and he's even the Trickster Mentor Big Good of the Marvel comic series and was last seen on screen being played by Fozzie Bear. Here, he's the ghost of mass-murdering industrialist Alistair Crump, who killed so many people in life he kept a small graveyard for them under his manor, has added at least 66 people to his body count since his ghost came to the mansion, and tries to kill Ben, Travis and Bruce over the course of the film.
• Adaptation Title Change: A small change, but the The has been removed from the title, to differentiate it from the ride and previous movie.
• Animate Inanimate Object: While hiding from the Hatbox Ghost, another spirit dives into Ben's candle, giving the candle an adorable little face in the process.
• Animated Armor: A living suit of armor stalks the halls of the mansion, as Travis and Gabbie discover on their first night there.
• Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: Gabbie warns Ben about crossing the threshold into the house and that it would change his life. After faking taking pictures and doing his best to comfort her, he soon returns home to find out that a ghost has followed him home and that she wasn't joking about how entering would be a life changing experience.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Alistair Crump. And his own aristocratic father made him that way.
• Asleep, Not Meditating: Harriet informs Ben and Gabbie that she is going to enter into a trance. She then begins to snore. Ben and Gabbie then argue about whether she is actually in a trance or just fell asleep. Harriet then wakes up and gets mad at them for talking too loudly.
• Astral Projection: Ben uses this technique to enter the ghost realm, though Harriet calls it a "reverse seance."
• Avengers Assemble: Ben and Kent go to recruit Harriet to join them in the mansion, as well as seek advice from Bruce. Bruce invites himself to the mansion anyway, despite Kent and Ben not wanting him to come because of his heart condition.
• Bait-and-Switch: Gabbie seemingly implies that she and Travis's father went through an acrimonious breakup, and Travis confesses to Ben that he's been secretly still speaking with his dad, who wants Travis to come live with him, but he worries that doing so would make Gabbie feel terrible. Ben, and most likely the audience, assume Travis has been making secret phone calls to his dad...but then Gabbie reveals that Travis's father died last year. Ben immediately pieces together that Travis hasn't been talking to his dad any more than Alyssa has been wandering the mansion at night, and it's another cruel trick from the Hatbox Ghost, just like the Hatbox Ghost used to drive William Gracey to suicide.
• Banishing Ritual: Harriet plans to use one of these to banish Alistair Crump to the underworld. She succeeds, with Madame Leota's help.
• Barred from the Afterlife: Harriet says that some ghosts don't move on to the afterlife because their souls are not at peace.
• Becoming the Mask: It's revealed towards the end that Kent isn't actually a priest; he's a con man who pretended to do exorcisms for quick cash. The whole adventure in the Mansion, however, inspires him to actually become a minister (something he tells Ben when he visits at Halloween).
• Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: Naturally for a film based on the trope namer, everyone who visits the mansion ends up being haunted by their own personal ghost until they return. This ends up being a big part of what brings the group together.
• Big Bad: Alistair Crump, otherwise known as the Hatbox Ghost.
• Big Good: Madame Leota, despite her stiff manners. William Gracey also does his best.
• The Big Easy: Ben, Harriet, and Kent all live here, and the film opens with narration from Leota describing it as a place where life and death happily coexist.
• Big Eater: Ben's dead wife Alyssa.
• Butt-Dialing Mordor: How Alistair Crump's spirit arrived at the Mansion. When Master Gracey tried to summon the spirit of his dead wife Eleanor, numerous other spirits were brought to the Mansion due to the ritual. It was one of these that allowed Alistair to arrive and manipulate Gracey to his suicide.
• Came Back with a Vengeance: Alistair Crump, after being cast out by his father and shunned by high society, he came back a self-made man and threw lavish balls in which he would kill the socialites who betrayed him. Following his demise, he came back as the Hatbox Ghost to wreak revenge on the world and gather souls to continue his rampage.
• The Cameo: Daniel Levy and Winona Ryder as the eccentric owners of Crump Manor.
• Candlelit Ritual: Harriet conducts a seance to contact the ghost of Gracey, and candles light up as a result of the seance.
• Canon Welding: The movie reconciles several different ideas of the mansion's history from the ride and other tie-in media by having it be an Eldritch Location that's passed through dozens of owners up to the present day. In the end, it becomes something not unlike the "retirement home for ghosts" Walt Disney pitched for the ride, with nearly a thousand ghosts- both people who died in the house and ghosts from all over the world who were drawn in by Madame Leota and William Gracey's year of midnight seances- choosing to stay simply because they like the place, even though they're no longer bound to it.
• Can't You Read the Sign?: The teaser opens as a car drives past a DO NOT ENTER sign on its way to the mansion.
• Central Theme: Grief, and the dangers of becoming transfixed by it rather than learning to appreciate life. William Gracey was so unable to move past his wife Eleanor's death from yellow fever that he killed himself to join her, only to end up permanently separated from her as a lost soul stranded in the mansion. Ben begins the story in similarly obsessive mourning for his own late wife Alyssa, and it's left him an alcoholic who's totally abandoned his successful career in astrophysics. Travis is also unable to move on from his dad's death.
  • All of the above examples make these characters vulnerable to the evil machinations of the Hatbox Ghost, who literally draws his power from others' grief and suicidal intentions like a resident of the Black Lodge.
• Cheerful Funeral: The movie opens with a jazz funeral procession as Leota explains to the audience that New Orleans is a place that embraces death as a part of life and can find celebration even in mourning.
• Closed Circle: The characters actually can leave the mansion, but they'll still be haunted. And rather aggressively, too. This leads to them all living together in the mansion for a while as they work on solving its mysteries.
• Cold Reading: Subverted. Harriet’s professional psychic experience is limited to doing readings at bar mitzvahs, and Kent suggests hiring her for the mansion only because she comes cheap, so it looks as though she’s using the power of suggestion on Ben and Kent by firing various names at them when they sit down with her. But when Kent plays along, Harriet flatly informs him she was just leading him on and she can tell he was lying, then calmly reveals that she knows the name of someone they really have been talking to: Gabbie.
• Company Cross References:
  • Travis, Gabbie's son, plays with Marvel action figures throughout the film.
  • David Levy's character plays "It's a Small World" on the piano in one scene.
• Condensation Clue: At the Crump Manor, Ben asks the captain who is haunting him for advice and is given a message through this technique. Complete with a frowny face.
• Creepy Cemetery: The film's climax takes place in one of these. It's full of ghosts, including the Big Bad, Alistair Crump.
• Creepy Good: Most of the ghosts, but especially Madame Leota, who rarely drops her stiff, ominous way of speaking and intense glare, but is the kindest and most helpful ghost in the film. We find out she was also a compassionate person in life, who gently tried to warn William Gracey that his efforts to contact Eleanor were becoming dangerous and tried to bring his murderer to justice.
• Crystal Ball: Madame Leota is seen trapped inside of a crystal ball (only her head is visible).
• Dance Party Ending: The film ends with the main cast and the mansion's happy haunts celebrating Halloween while dancing to a remix of "Grim Grinning Ghosts".
• Darker and Edgier: This film is much darker than the more recent Disney fare, with a more macabre tone, suicide being a major plot point and the Hatbox Ghost taking advantage of people's grief.
• The Dead Can Dance: At the beginning of the end credits, some of the ghosts in the mansion are seen dancing.
• Dead Person Conversation: Harriet uses a seance to contact Gracey, the dead former owner of the mansion.
• Death by Adaptation: The caretaker and his dog, both very much alive in the ride, are ghosts in this continuity, much like the previous film.
• Decomposite Character: In official park lore, the older woman in the stretching portrait sitting on top of her dead husband's grave is identified as an older Constance Hatchaway. In this movie, she's never identified by name, but she's a separate character from Constance and helps Ben and Travis escape the stretching room, with her dialogue implying she probably didn't kill her husband. Constance, meanwhile, is a feral, murderous ghoul in her afterlife.
• Demonic Possession: Ben is briefly possessed by the Hatchet Man ghost while he's astral projecting, leaving his body vulnerable. Later, when Ben, Kent and Travis return from Crump Manor, Bruce is possessed by the Hatbox Ghost.
• Detrimental Determination: The mansion's troubles began with William Gracey's Grief and refusal to accept his wife was gone. He hired Madame Leota to contact his wife, who had passed to the other side and so couldn't respond, by performing seances every day for a year, despite never getting an answer. While summoning hundreds of ghosts and Leota warning him that they were weakening the barrier between the human and spirit realm, Gracey persisted in his actions. Eventually, they summoned the Hatbox Ghost, who preyed on and manipulated Gracey's pain to get him to commit suicide and adding to the 1000 souls Crump needs to complete the ritual.
• Dragged Off to Hell: or more likely, Dragged Back To The Afterlife, This is the fate of Alistair Crump near the end of the final battle agaisnt Ben, being kicked in the face by Ben's shoe as Crump falls back to the portal to the afterlife he made to send his final 1000th soul.
• The Dreaded: The approach of the Hatbox Ghost sends the other ghosts in the mansion fleeing for their unlives.
• Driven to Suicide: William Gracey was determined to be Together in Death with his late wife, Eleanor, and took arsenic to be with her again after Madame Leota couldn't reach her on the other side but he began to receive ghostly messages from her. Sadly, he ended up a restless spirit forever searching for her instead.
  • Even worse: the messages were never from Eleanor. Alistair Crump, as the Hatbox Ghost, faked the messages to lure Gracey into suicide. In the present, he tries to do the same thing to Ben and even little Travis.
• Eldritch Location: The mansion itself. It regularly warps its own floorplan to confound curious mortals, and Bruce discovers that there's no record that it was ever actually built. It just appeared one day, as far as anyone can tell.
• Every Man Has His Price: Ben initially refuses to go anywhere near the mansion. He asks for the address once Wilson tells him how much he will be paid.
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: After Madame Leota explains how the Hatbox Ghost's end goal is to gather 1,000 souls, and that by her count, he's up to 933, Bruce chimes in that in the time since Leota's imprisonment, there's been 66 deaths on the property, meaning Hatbox is just one soul away from completeing the set.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: The Hatbox Ghost mocks Ben that he could have been the final willing soul.
  Gabbie: Travis? Where's Travis!
  Ben: Travis is okay, all right? He's at the car, he's talking to his dad.
  Gabbie: What? That's not possible!
  Ben: Gabbie, he still talks to his father.
  Gabbie: His father is dead, Ben! Just over a year ago!
  Hatbox Ghost: (laughing) Surprise!
• Family of Choice: At the start of the film, Ben is alone, still grieving his wife and working as a tour guide to pay the bills. At the end, he's formed this trope with Gabby, Travis, Kent, Harriet, Bruce, and the ghosts of the mansion. ^note  Sometimes a family is you, your possible girlfriend, your adopted son, a con man turned minister, a phony medium who isn't a phony, an elderly history professor, and 999 happy haunts
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Ben suggests that Travis can call his dad while they re-enter the mansion for the climax, instead of a phone or tablet, a quick shot shows Ben pull out a book, lending new context to his suggestion that his mother might not be happy with the thought of him talking to his father or going to see him, and suggesting that Travis might also be vulnerable to the Hatbox Ghost's lies and manipulations.
  • The fact that Ben is no longer the Hatbox Ghost's final target is implied when he tries to hand Ben a poisoned glass while possessing Bruce, since the previous scene stated that the final target had to be willing, and slipping him poison would not fulfil that requirement.
• Footprints of Muck: The Mariner leaves watery footprints wherever he walks.
• Friend to All Children: Ben is antisocial and a bit cold with pretty much every adult he meets at the start of the movie. However, he's notably friendlier and kinder to Travis, especially after he learns that the kid is separated from his father in other words, Travis' father passed away and is being bullied in school. He even gifts Travis an action figure he played with as a kid and plays with him.
• Ghost Butler: Not only does the door close behind Ben, Kent, and Travis, the windows shrink to prevent them from escaping.
• Ghost Ship: After the climax, Ben fulfills his promise to the mariner ghost haunting him by driving him out to a sea dock, where he steals a boat from some living people. Ben and Travis hastily make their exit after this.
• Ghostly Chill: Subverted. Bruce wonders whether it's getting colder because of the ghosts, but it turns out that he's just cold because he's not wearing pants.
• Good All Along: Most of the ghosts are friendly, though the Hatbox Ghost is able to force them into doing his bidding. And even the Black Widow Constance chooses to help the heroes in the end.
• Grave Humor: Underneath Crump Manor, Travis finds a room that contains several graves with humorous epitaphs, which is a reference to the graves found near the real Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World.
• Haunted Headquarters: By the end, the ghosts don't actually want to leave the mansion, and neither do Gabbie and Travis. Ben, Bruce, Kent, and Harriet come to hang out, too.
• Haunted House: If the title and source material weren’t a dead giveaway that this trope is in play, the teaser and trailer showing the characters wandering through a spooky house and encountering ghosts should.
• I Miss Mom: Travis misses his dead father. This is taken advantage of by the ghost of Alistair Crump, who tries to tempt him into joining his father in the afterlife.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Played with. The Hatbox Ghost looks more or less like a more sinister version of his ride design, but when Bruce uncovers his real identity Alistair Crump, he's illustrated as having looked just like his voice/mocap actor, Jared Leto, in life.
• Insistent Terminology: Harriet insists on being called a "medium" rather than a "psychic."
• Laser-Guided Karma: Ben, Kent and Harriet all find themselves stuck in the Mansion because they saw Gabbie as a mark. She even explains to them that walking into the House ensures that they will be haunted if they try to leave, so they were practically asking for it when they ignore her and took her money anyway.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Because the Hatbox Ghost locked Leota in a trunk in the attic for a while, Leota believes that she's only been dead for a few months (no one tells her it's been a century at least) and that the Hatbox Ghost has only captured 933 souls (Bruce states that it's actually at 999).
• Logo Joke: The Disney logo, in its 100th anniversary variation, in the trailer has the castle rendered in spooky glowing shades of purples and blue.
• The Lost Lenore: Alyssa, for Ben.
• Lunacy: The ghost of Alistair Crump is said to become more powerful during the full moon. Correspondingly, he becomes visible rather than being invisible like he is during the rest of the film.
• MacGuffin: Alistair Crump's hat is needed for a ritual to banish him to the underworld. Alistair Crump also wants the hat to keep the other characters from using it in the ritual.
• Magical Camera: Using his knowledge of astrophysics and dark matter, which is treated like Sufficiently Analyzed Magic, Ben develops a camera that can take pictures of ghosts.
• Meaningful Echo: Kent challenges Ben into accepting his offer to investigate the mansion by asking him "Do you want to be a hero?" When Kent admits he's not really a priest, Ben encourages him to stay and fight anyway by repeating these words back to him, and Kent himself later uses it to convince the non-Crump ghosts to help the living characters fight against him.
• Metaphorically True: Ben and Bruce go to the police to describe The Hatbox Ghost's appearance, claiming that Ben was mugged by a random person in the streets rather than the less believable idea of being attacked by a ghost.
• Mirror Scare: Ben wipes off a mirror while exploring the attic, getting a Jump Scare from Constance appearing behind him.
• Monochrome Apparition: Almost all the ghosts except for the ghost of Alistair Crump are light blue.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Early in the film, Ben's wife Alyssa dies in a car crash. Near the end of the film, Ben is tempted by Alistair Crump to join his wife in death. He refuses, thereby accepting his wife's death and giving Harriet and Madame Leota the opportunity to defeat Alistair.
• Mythology Gag: More than can even be counted.
  • Gabbie advises Ben that the ghosts react negatively toward flash photography. On the ride, the Ghost Host reminds you that "spirits are frightfully sensitive to bright lights."
  • The exterior design of the mansion in the teaser resembles its New Orleans-style appearance from Disneyland.
  • Crump Manor resembles the versions of the ride at Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disneyland.
    • The fireplace is partitioned by the famous bat-shaped stanchions from the ride's queue.
  • To prevent Ben and Travis from escaping and getting what they needed to banish him, Crump traps them in the foyer and makes it stretch just like in the ride, with Ben and Travis even dealing with the hazards shown in the portraits (quicksand, bomb, crocodile).
  • When she was still alive and when briefly called back to life, Madame Leota wore a large circular headdress, foreshadowing her appearance in the ride as an Oracular Head in a Crystal Ball.
  • The dueling ghosts from the ride regularly reenact their duel in the hallways of the mansion.
  • The first (known) owner of the house is named William Gracey, a reference to the Master Gracey tombstone on the grounds of the ride, which itself is a tribute to the ride's special effects man Yale Gracey.
    • The Hatbox Ghost's real name is Alistair Crump, a reference to Imagineer Rolly Crump.
  • Bruce's last name is a reference to Imagineer Marc Davis who developed many of the ride's iconic gags and characters.
  • A ghost diving into an ordinary candle turns it anthropomorphic. This is possibly a reference to the Weird Candle Man concept art from the Museum of the Weird attraction, which eventually evolved into the Haunted Mansion.
  • When Ben explains that the other ghosts are terrified of the Hatbox Ghost, Bruce exclaims "A ghost haunting other ghosts!" This comes from Imagineer Ken Anderson's original pitch for the house, where a retired pirate named Captain Gore/Gideon Gorelieu murdered his young bride-to-be Priscilla and was haunted until and beyond his own death by her vengeful spirit.
  • The invisible mariner personally haunting Ben leaves wet footprints, another vestige of the original Ken Anderson pitch (where Priscilla's ghost left them behind after being thrown into a well).
    • The mariner also manifests as a ghostly wave that floods Ben's apartment, referencing one of the planned illusions in Ken Anderson's pitch.
  • The secret graveyard where Crump buried his victims has darkly humorous, rhyming tombstones, just like the graveyards in the various versions of the ride.
  • The banishment spell cast by Harriet in the film's climax begins by quoting the ride's opening spiel ("When hinges creak in doorless chambers...").
  • In the film's opening, the Hatbox Ghost chuckles "You'll be back..." as Gabbie and Travis flee the mansion, calling to mind Little Leota's "hurry back" message at the end of the ride.
  • Master Gracey's wife is played by an Ambiguously Brown actress, possibly a reference to the 2003 movie where she was played by a biracial actress.
  • The trailers begin with the Ghost Host saying "Welcome foolish mortals..." These words are also spoken by Madame Leota as the opening line of the film.
  • The chair that Bruce ends up being carried away in is designed to match the one that sits outside of the infinite hallway of the ride. Also, the chair with the bird above it is a reference to a similar chair in the seance room.
  • The chair that Harriet is carried away in resembles the "Doom Buggy" ride vehicle.
• Named In The Adaptation: The Hatbox Ghost's real name is Alistair Crump.
• The Napoleon: Played with. Alistair Crump/the Hatbox Ghost was not a short man, but he nevertheless had his own chair augmented by cushions and his guests' chairs shortened so he could lord it over them at the dinner table out of a psychopathic Inferiority Superiority Complex.
• Never Split the Party: The ghosts are more likely to target someone the smaller their group is, at a maximum of two, with the protagonists quickly deciding that no one should go anywhere in the mansion alone. They only break this rule when someone else is alone and needs recovering. The more aggressive ghosts work around this by taking the opportunity to divide groups when their guard is lowered.
• Not-So-Phony Psychic: Played with. Harriet begins seemingly as a Phony Psychic, but it turns out she has mild skills she exaggerates. As the plot progresses, she becomes stronger and stronger as a medium, until she and Leota can team up.
• Off with His Head!:
  • Naturally, Constance is shown with her husbands, all of whom are missing their heads thanks to her Ax-Crazy nature (literally with an ax). She attempts to lop off Ben's head when he enters the attic.
  • How the Hatbox Ghost met his end as Alister Crump, with his mistreated servants ganging up on him and lopping off his head, which is later found by Travis in Crump’s secret body dumping ground, covered by his own hat.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • After the group speak to Leota, they discover that the seances that she and William Gracey conducted summoned over 930 ghosts to the mansion, and the Hatbox Ghost needs exactly 1000 souls to complete his ritual to be free of the mansion. Bruce realizes that, since there have been a little over 60 owners of the mansion since Leota was sealed away by the Hatbox Ghost, there are now 999 souls trapped in the mansion, and the Hatbox Ghost only needs one more soul to finish his ritual. And the full moon, where Hatbox is at his strongest, is in just 4 days.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Two women in Ben's tour group are named Carol.
• Parental Substitute: There are signs throughout the movie that Ben is becoming this for Travis, who's father isn't around anymore.
• Parting-Words Regret: Part of Ben's grief is that the last thing he said to Alyssa was a frustrated refusal to go shopping with her when she decided to buy tater tots.
• Politically Correct History: William Gracey’s ghost is awfully kind to and helpful towards Ben (a Black man) for a rich white landowner from 19th century Louisiana. It’s possibly justified, however, by his beloved Lost Lenore Eleanor having been a mixed-race Black woman herself (see her actress, Erika Coleman◊), implying Gracey likely never bought into segregationist ideals (considering Eleanor was his wife and mistress of the house, not just his lover)- rare, but certainly not unheard of.
• Poltergeist: A candlestick is seen floating through the air, presumably being carried by an invisible ghost, of which there are many in the film.
• Poor Communication Kills: Almost happens as the climax could have been avoided had Gabbie clarified to Ben that her husband was dead, not just "not in the picture."
• Product Placement:
  • Apparently, Gabbie gets her Yankee Candles through Amazon, while Ben gets his Tater Tots from Burger King.
  • Also, the titular Haunted Mansion was for sale on Zillow for some reason.
  • While talking to Gracy's ghost, Harriet feels the need to clarify that she bought her pen and notepad at CVS. She also clarifies that her special powder is actually just sage specifically from Costco.
  • While telling the story of how his wife died, Ben says she went to get ice cream and hastily specifies that she went to Baskin-Robbins to get it.
• Punch-Clock Villain: It's shown that many of the ghosts in the Mansion aren't actually evil; they're all too scared of the Hatbox Ghost to refuse his orders. Most of them seem to be the happy haunts the ride shows (when left to his own devices, the worst thing the Mariner does is watch Deadliest Catch and drip water on the floor). By the end of the climax, all it takes is a rousing speech from Kent to bring all of the ghosts to their side.
• Scooby-Dooby Doors: Father Kent has the ghosts chase him through the Mansion as it's getting manipulated by spectral power in this regard.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Gabbie has this attitude the moment she sees the suit of armor move. Unfortunately for her and son, she finds out the ghosts have hitched a ride with them and continue the haunting wherever they go.
• Secret Room: In the mansion, there turns out to be a seance room which is hidden behind a painting.
• Serial Killer:
  • Constance Hatchaway is one of the many residents in the mansion, along with her husbands that she killed with her ax after marriage. She still looks for another man to kill as a ghost.
  • Alistair Crump was a popular socialite who would invite many guests to his lavish parties, and then secretly murdered them before burying them under his manor, with tombstones mocking their deaths. Even when he was killed by his own staff, that didn't stop him from killing more people. He simply became the Hatbox Ghost and tricked people into signing their own death warrants at the Gracey's mansion, with the intent of collecting 1000 souls to roam free and terrorize the world.
• Shout-Out: Beyond the many, many references to the original Disney theme park ride(s), the movie is full of references to other famous ghost and horror films.
  • Father Kent's hat and sunglasses, along with his priestly habit, make him resemble Father Merrin in The Exorcist. It's especially noticeable when he and Ben return from Crump Manor and Kent is briefly shot from behind in silhouette looking up at the mansion, making him resemble that movie's iconic poster image of Merrin outside of the O'Neill house. Possibly invoked in-universe, because Kent is really a conman who uses a priest costume to perform phony exorcisms.
  • The mansion's long history of untimely deaths over the course of many different owners, and its possibly being a uniquely cursed place to begin with, culminating in a group of strangers staying in it together, recalls The Haunting of Hill House. Fitting, as its first film adaptation was a major influence on the Haunted Mansion ride itself (and its second adaptation also starred Owen Wilson).
  • The Hatbox Ghost seeking one more victim to become a ghost in the mansion, which is otherwise populated by friendly, fun-loving spooks (and Constance) is reminiscent of the plot of 13 Ghosts. The scope and ritual of what he requires to get his evil plan to work resembles its remake, Thir13en Ghosts.
  • At one point Ben runs through a graveyard where skeletal arms grab at him, much like Ash's experience in Army of Darkness.
  • Many to Poltergeist (1982).
    • The main characters (including the family who live there and the paranormal investigators there to help them) end up sleeping slumber party-style in the foyer, much like the Freelings and Tangina's team.
    • Ben's ghost photos, taken with his special lens, produce shimmering still images of the spirits that look a lot like the benign souls climbing up and down the Freeling's living room staircase on Tangina's team's special video camera.
    • Much like in Poltergeist, the main villain tries to lure a child into the afterlife by creating an illusion of heavenly light.
    • When Ben, Kent, and Travis return from Crump Manor, the windows of the titular mansion are rapidly flashing an unearthly purple light, just like the Feelings’ house toward the climax.
    • Toward the end, Bruce happily declares the house is “clear”, much like Tangina’s declaration of “this house is clean”. Both are wrong though in Bruce’s case, it’s because he’s possessed by the Hatbox Ghost.
    • Both the titular mansion and the Freeling house are nexus points between the land of the living and the realm of the dead, overlapping as separate dimensions on the same spot and attracting hundreds of ghosts.
    • Both movies have a cast of mostly benign ghosts and one horrifyingly malign chief-antagonist ghost that both holds them in thrall and targets the living.
    • The characters are attacked by living trees at one point in the movie.
• Ship Tease: Ben and Gabbie. It's all but stated that they're together when Ben visits the mansion for Halloween and brings a bouquet of flowers.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: As Gabbie, Travis, and Ben all find out quickly, once you enter the house, the ghosts will haunt them wherever they go. Gabbie and Travis apparently tried offscreen to move several times between them fleeing the mansion at the start of the film and when Ben visits them there, only for the hauntings to get progressively worse the longer they stayed away. Meaning, the only way for the heroes to get their lives back is to solve the mystery of the mansion and put the ghosts to rest.
• Spiders Are Scary: When Travis lifts up Alistair's hat, a Scare Chord can be heard when there turns out to be a big spider underneath it.
• Spooky Photographs: Ben develops a camera lens that should be able to take photos of "Ghost Particles". He forgets batteries when Gabbie hires him to come over. However, when spooky occurrences happen at his house, he gives the camera batteries and is able to see the particles of the sea captain and later uses his tech to get a better view of the ghosts.
• Spooky Séance: Harriet sits down at a table with Ben and Gabbie to contact the ghost of Gracey, the mansion's previous owner.
• Super Identikit: Played for laughs. Bruce and Ben give a police sketch artist a vague description of the Hatbox Ghost and he produces a perfect likeness. Taken even further when Bruce requests the artist do a version "with skin", and the result is a perfect likeness of Alistair Crump, which allows the gang to identify the ghost for real.
• Supernatural Light: All of the ghosts in the film glow, except sometimes the ghost of Alistair Crump.
• Take Me Instead: Ben says this to the Hatbox Ghost to save Travis. It was all a fakeout.
• Tarot Motifs: Character posters released in June 2023 featured each main character as a tarot card:
  • Ben — The Sun
  • Gabbie — The Moon
  • Travis — The Tower
  • Madame Leota — The Wands
  • Harriet — The Goblets
  • Kent — The Swords
  • Bruce — The Cups
  • Ghost Host — The Hermit
  • Ghost Bride — The Lovers
  • Hitchhiking Ghost — The Fool
  • The Hatbox Ghost is his own tarot category, symbolizing that he's the deck master.
• Tick Tock Terror: While the characters are trying to sleep, a grandfather clock in the mansion chimes deeply.
• Token Evil Teammate: Constance may be a serial killer in her own right, and a nearly feral monster in death, but even she chooses to join the protagonists in the last stand against the Hatbox Ghost.
• "Too Young to Die" Lamentation: Inverted when Bruce says "I'm too old to die!" Later, it's also played straight when Travis says "I'm too young to die!"
• Treacherous Spirit Chase: Travis hears his dead father's voice coming from a crack in the floor. The voice encourages Travis to join him in death. This is actually a trick played by Alistair Crump, who is not Travis' father.
• True Companions: Ben, Gabbie, Travis, Kent, Harriet, and Bruce go from a ragtag group of people drawn to the mansion to a family of choice.
• Trumplica: The Hatbox Ghost, a.k.a. Alistair Crump has shades of this with a little Aleister Crowley thrown in. He's the abused son of a wealthy real-estate tycoon who takes it out on the world when he becomes even bigger than his father, to say nothing of a name that rhymes with Trump. He’s less of a straight example and more of a Does This Remind You of Anything? case, but the comparison is there.
• Unnaturally Looping Location: Ben walks through similar sections of corridors past similar paintings of a man (the Hatchet Man/Ghost Host) about to carve a turkey… which eventually changes to the man menacingly holding up the hatchet that was previously on the table.
• When Trees Attack: As Ben, Kent and Travis try to drive off the Mansion's grounds, the creepy trees come to life and try to attack the car with their branches in an attempt to prevent the living trio from escaping.
• Wight in a Wedding Dress: Who else but Constance?
• Would Hurt a Child: Crump is happy to try to use Travis- an innocent nine-year-old boy- as the thousandth soul.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Madame Leota gives this to Harriet, telling her she's a more powerful medium than she realizes.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Ben's skepticism of the mansion being haunted isn't helped by the fact that the ghosts seem to cheekingly choose not to reveal themselves whenever Gabbie warns him about triggering specific hauntings. He's already crossed the threshold and thus will soon become a believer anyway.

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