With the release of Haunted Mansion, director Justin Simien, who forged his reputation with the indie comedy Dear White People and its subsequent spinoff series, makes the leap to splashy studio-made summer movie.
While some might scoff about the artistic virtue of transforming a popular Disneyland ride into a could-be movie franchise (after the failed launch of 2003's The Haunted Mansion, starring Eddie Murphy), Simien saw this as an opportunity to make the kind of movie he treasured as a kid.
"Someone called [Haunted Mansion] like 'baby's first horror movie' or something," Simien said in an interview with Mashable. "And I love that — though it's more genre than horror. I mean, there are certainly horror flourishes, but it's a comedy ensemble that's in a very fantasy/horror kind of world. And that was just my jam growing up."
Justin Simien found inspiration for Haunted Mansion in Tim Burton and classic horror films.
Among the movies Simien listed as influential — both on him as a kid and in the making of Haunted Mansion — were early Tim Burton movies like Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands, as well as Frank Oz's horror-comedy musical Little Shop of Horrors, Ivan Reitman's comedy classic Ghostbusters, Jonathan Lynn's beloved cult caper Clue, and Wolfgang Petersen's traumatizing child-centered adventure The Neverending Story. But a pivotal inspiration is a throwback to classic horror.
"For me, a big touchstone was Robert Weiss's The Haunting (1963), which is so obviously a an influence of the [Haunted Mansion] ride itself." Simien said, "No one said that anywhere, but you can just watch that movie and feel the influence in the ride."
Simien explained, "[Those movies] spoke to me. To see weird people in weird situations, living something that felt like life but also took me away from my everyday life? That was the stuff that kind of buoyed me as a kid — and certainly [made me] want to be a director."
Beyond these fascinating worlds full of ghosts, fantastical creatures, murder, and comical mayhem, Simien was also drawn to these films because of their practical effects. "I love the practicality of them," he said. "I love how — even today — when you watch some of the sequences, even though you're being taken to heaven and hell and all these fantasy worlds, it's being done with lighting and production design and puppets. And so even though you know it's not real, there's a tactile practicality to the world that makes you believe in it anyway. That was like a big touchstone. And those were the movies I cited when I talked [to the production team] about what I wanted Haunted Mansion to feel."
Justin Simien reveals what it means to be Black, gay, and working for Disney right now.
Amid the revelry for Haunted Mansion's release, Simien is forced to contend with several issues while promoting the movie. Disney, the film's studio and distributor, is engaged in a fight with anti-LGBTQ+ politician Ron DeSantis, which is part of a culture war that rages across the nation, threatening the rights and safety of queer people. On top of that, Haunted Mansion is opening during the SAG/AFTRA and WGA strike, which has caused some of the public to question Simien's continuing on the film's promotional tour.
Simien has addressed the controversy over walking Haunted Mansion's red carpet. Asked what it means for him, as a gay, Black filmmaker, to have a family-friendly movie getting a nationwide release from Disney right now, he admitted, "It's a really weird time to not only make something but to also stand in front of a release of any kind right now. But it also feels really, really important."
"I don't know that it's happened before exactly, that a gay, Black director has made a movie like this, specifically for this audience," Simien said. "But at the same time, I know that these are the kinds of movies I grew up on. They fed my Black, gay spirit as a kid. And I'm really proud that that's something I could accomplish — and not only just accomplish it, but put so many Black people in the movie, and lean into some of the really subversive, fun stuff about Disney that doesn't always get emphasized in these movies. That was definitely really important to me; it felt like I had to do it. It felt like a mandate, almost."
Justin Simien praised his ensemble cast of heroes and ghosts.
The Haunted Mansion stars LaKeith Stanfield, Rosario Dawson, Tiffany Haddish, and Chase Dillon, as well as Jamie Lee Curtis, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Jared Leto, and Beetlejuice's Winona Ryder. Simien has sung the praise of the ensemble, who rejected cynicism to throw their earnestness and enthusiasm into a tale of wild ghosts and comically haunted mortals. Asked how the cast came together, Simien revealed that Black representation was a part of his pitch from the start.
"There were some things that I was really adamant about when we got in there," Simien said of the pitch meeting. "One of them was, we had to have a Black lead. Part of my pitch was I wanted to really ground the Haunted Mansion in New Orleans, which is where it is supposedly at [per park lore]. And New Orleans is an 85% Black [city]."
"And I was like, 'We got to have a Black lead,' And it's got to be somebody that can pull us into a character in a story that would be difficult if it was somebody else," he explained. That lead ended up being Stanfield, who brings a rattling pathos, sharp comedic timing, and chest-hair swagger to the role of Ben Matthias.
The rest of the casting Simien said "was a lot more of a collaboration once we locked in our lead." He was in awe of the ensemble that was pulled together, not so much because of their star power ("I started my Hollywood career in publicity; stars don't really [phase me].") but because of how they came together in making the movie.
"I come from a theatre background," Simien noted. "That's where I learned directing. And I love working with actors, like it's my favorite part of it, finding performance and creating a creative space and figuring out people's dynamics with each other. Like, that's the stuff that turns me on.
"And even though these were really big stars," Simien said, "they were so game and so passionate. And it's so easy to be cynical about things like this because it's big IP. You're rushed. It's really a crucible to make a movie."
Yet Simien said the cast came together to make "the best movie" possible. "And it was really, that was my heart. The cast was my whole heart. And so it was so great getting to work with each of them, and all such geniuses in very specific ways. It was really beautiful."
Haunted Mansion is now in theaters.
