Frightful delights await in Walt Disney Pictures’ Haunted Mansion, now in theaters.
Inspired by the classic theme park attraction of the same name, Haunted Mansion follows a mother and son who enlist a motley crew of so-called spiritual experts to help rid their home of supernatural squatters. The film is directed by Justin Simien, who developed a deep appreciation for the attraction as a student at Chapman University in the early 2000s. “In college, I was a ride host for the Grizzly River Run attraction,” Simien recalls. “It was amazing to do that in film school, because it was like I got another education in cinema.”
That’s because Simien would spend his downtime mingling with the 999 happy haunts of New Orleans Square, marveling at the physical reactions certain beats in the story would elicit. Even then, he knew there was an “inherently cinematic” quality to the attraction: “I remember experiencing Haunted Mansion back in the day and thinking, ‘What is this? How do I do this in a movie? How do I make a person feel this way?’ Anything is possible in a movie, and I would think about it a lot. But I didn’t have an answer to that until this movie.”
(In fact, Simien had been mystified by the Haunted Mansion attraction ever since a family vacation to Walt Disney World Resort, when “a hitchhiking ghost in a mirror appeared to be riding with me out the exit,” he recalls. “At 8, I figured it was a trick, but I couldn’t work out how. For years I wondered if that ghost was still hitchhiking with me in the real world.”)
To preserve the attraction’s charm onscreen, filmmakers used practical effects whenever possible. “People use the term ‘smoke and mirrors,’ and the attraction literally uses smoke and mirrors—the Pepper’s Ghost effect—to make you believe in ghosts,” Simien says. “It is classic Disney in that way: ‘This is not possible, and yet, it’s right in front of my own eyes and it has a physicality to it that I can’t explain.’ When you see the ghosts waltzing in the dining room, you know they’re not really there, but they’re somewhere; they’re physical. That kind of ‘how did they do that?’ quality was essential for me to take into this movie.”
While Haunted Mansion features state-of-the-art digital effects, Simien notes, “It was important to me that the film never felt like it took place in a digital void. There should always be a sense of wonder as to how the effect was achieved. To this end, we built practical sets, including giant Mansion interiors in both normal and ‘ghost realm’ colors, which allowed us to explore these different spaces in real time with our cast rather than relying upon VFX. There were tracks under the set to move chairs being ‘dragged by ghosts’ as well as people holding filaments and puppeteering the many mysteriously floating objects around the house. Most of the ghosts were filmed practically with people in costumes and prosthetics, often hanging from wires, before being enhanced digitally to ensure the cast could truly interact with each other whether playing the living or dead.”
As the film opens in theaters, Simien is thinking a lot about his evolution from cast member to director. “It’s surreal. It’s an honor. It’s a responsibility,” he says. “Sometimes as an artist, you encounter work and you just know in your bones how to do it. The point of view was already in me. My family is from Louisiana, and I’ve always been obsessed with the attraction. It feels really kismet and weird to direct this, and I probably won’t be able to fully articulate what it’s been like for some time until this is over. I am still very much in it.”