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HAUNTED MANSION (2023)

"Too Occult"

Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)
Entertainment Quality:
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Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

HAUNTED MANSION is a Disney reboot of a 2003 movie. In the new story, a quirky but benevolent Catholic priest, Father Kent, assembles three people to help Gabbie, a young divorced woman, and her 9-year-old son, Travis. Gabbie is the new owner of a mansion she wanted to transform into a bed and breakfast. However, the mansion is filled with ghosts. The ghosts have attached themselves to all six of these people because they want something from them. Solving that riddle leads the people on a wild, scary, dangerous adventure into the supernatural.

 

The new HAUNTED MANSION has some funny, exciting, scary moments, but its ghost story lacks credibility. Also, the demonic villain doesn’t show up until the second act. HAUNTED MANSION has a strong occult worldview and false occult theology. This unbiblical content is slightly mitigated by some positive moral, redemptive elements. For instance, it has a strong mother figure in the boy’s mother. However, HAUNTED MANSION’s ending is too occult and unbiblical. Hollywood would do better if it takes a Christian, biblical approach to the supernatural, like the movie NEFARIOUS.

Content:

(OO, FRFR, BB, CC, AB, Ho, L, VV, S, A, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Strong occult worldview and false occult theology, with images of ghosts and references to seances and people speaking to the dead, where the protagonists defeat the demonic ghost villain and serial killer by tricking him and performing an occult incantation, the movie has two medium characters and dead people can decide to stay on Earth as friendly ghosts, mitigated slightly by some positive moral, redemptive elements such as positive nods to family, mothers, the importance of fathers, a character poses as a Catholic priest, but he’s trying to help people as are other characters, and brief images of churches in New Orleans and crosses in cemeteries, plus the priest in the movie brandishes a cross at some angry ghosts in one scene but it doesn't stop them and he has to convince them verbally that he's not their enemy but that the villain is the real enemy and they should go after him, and there are two light homosexual references such as a brief allusion to a possible lesbian attraction between two female characters who hold hands in one scene and a tour guide in a side location acts in an effeminate manner;

Foul Language:
Two or three obscenities (including one “d” word) and six light exclamatory profanities;

Violence:
Strong and light scary and comical violence such as ghosts haunt people, ghost turns a man’s apartment into a raging sea, the ocean water spits man out on the street, sharp objects fly toward people, two ghosts re-enact a pistol duel, references to demonic villain murdering hundreds of people;

Sex:
No sex scenes but two or three innuendoes and light allusions to homosexuality;

Nudity:
No nudity;

Alcohol Use:
Brief alcohol use, and it’s implied that a man grieving over his wife’s untimely death is drowning his grief in alcohol but there’s no drunkenness implied or depicted;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Trickery, demonic oppression, and the references to Heaven and Hell in the movie are too vague and uncertain as well as not Christian or biblical.

More Detail:

In HAUNTED MANSION, a Disney reboot of a 2003 movie, a young, widowed astrophysicist, who’s invented a camera to take photos of ghosts, is one of three people assembled by a self-identified Catholic priest to help a divorced woman and her son, who are being haunted by hundreds of ghosts in an isolated old mansion outside New Orleans. The new HAUNTED MANSION has some funny, exciting, scary moments, with some positive content, but it’s not entirely successful and ultimately favors a strong, false occult worldview with an occult ending that negates the movie’s positive elements.

Ben, the astrophysicist, is s widowed till grieving the death of his beloved wife. Father Kent, the priest, has given Ben $2,000 to take pictures of the ghosts living in Gabbie’s new mansion, which she intended to build into a bed and breakfast. However, the mansion turned out to be haunted, and she wants Ben to help them identify the ghosts with his camera.

Ben pretends to take pictures of the alleged ghosts. He tells Gabbie nothing’s there and rushes back to his apartment in New Orleans, where he’s taken over his late wife’s “ghost tours” of the city. However, a sea captain’s ghost from the mansion has attached itself to Ben and turned his apartment into a raging ocean.

Ben discovers that Father Kent and Gabbie have tricked him. Like him, as soon as they set foot in the mansion, one of the ghosts attached itself to them and followed them everywhere. When Ben complains about the trick, Gabbie reminds him that she warned him his life would change if he stepped foot inside the mansion.

Besides Ben, Father Kent has enlisted the help of a crazy psychic named Harriet. Father Kent, Ben, Harriet, and Gabbie also decide to enlist the help of Bruce Davis, a historian who knows all about the haunted places in New Orleans.

They figure out that the ghosts have attached themselves to everyone because they want something from them. Solving that riddle leads them on a wild, scary, dangerous adventure into the supernatural.

The new HAUNTED MANSION has some funny, exciting, scary moments. However, if you’re not afraid of ghosts, or believe that ghosts don’t really exist, HAUNTED MANSION won’t offer much in the way of entertainment for you. Also, HAUNTED MANSION isn’t edgy enough or cleaver enough to attract fans of ghost stories.

Theologically, HAUNTED MANSION doesn’t make much sense. It has a strange, false occult worldview whereby some ghosts, or spirits, of dead people can just hang around the natural world for as long as they want. Meanwhile, the movie suggests that good spirits go to some occult kind of Heaven, while evil spirits go to some occult kind of Hell. Finally, in the story, the villain turns out to be an evil, demonic ghost who’s greedy for supernatural power. The problem is, he doesn’t make an appearance until the movie’s second act.

The occult worldview in HAUNTED MANSION is slightly mitigated by some positive moral elements. For example, Gabbie is a strong mother figure who’s trying to help her son, Travis, cope with their separation from his father. Eventually, Ben becomes a strong father figure for Travis. He helps save Travis from the demonic villain, but, in the end, Ben tells Travis that Travis saved him and helped him get over the grief he’s felt for his wife’s untimely death.

Finally, although the protagonists in HAUNTED MANSION are trying to defeat an evil, demonic villain, they solve the plot problem in the movie’s climax by using occult means and trickery. Also, they help the mansion’s ghosts banish their demonic oppressor, but the ghosts stick around and don’t get to move on to Heaven.

Like much of the world, Disney has never had a proper biblical theology about ghosts and the occult. As with all sin, dabbling in the occult is rebellion against God and, ultimately, demonic. Horror movies, even comical ones, that don’t link ghosts to demons lead people far astray. The ending to HAUNTED MANSION is just too occult.

Deuteronomy 18:10-12: “There shall not be found among you anyone who. . . practices divination, or a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.”



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