Disney’s Haunted Mansion Trailer Brings the Laughs and the Scares

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Disney has finally unveiled the first full-length trailer for the movie adaptation of the beloved Disneyland ride, Haunted Mansion, and it’s bringing all the laughs and frights.

In the adaptation, Rosario Dawson stars as a single mother who moves herself into a New Orleans manor, only to realize it’s infested with spiritual squatters. She enlists a team of paranormal experts (LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, Jamie Lee Curtis) to help get rid of them, but that’s easier said than done.

As seen in the trailer above, Dawson and company hilariously confront the ghost of the house, including a particularly harrowing confrontation with Jared Leto’s Hatbox Ghost, Haddish’s run-in with a doom buggy of her own, and a meta shot of a trio of hitchhiking ghosts that appear inside riders’ vehicles near the end of the ride at both Disneyland and Disney World.

Inspired by the Disney Parks attraction of the same name, the Justin Simien-directed film “found the sweet spot of scary, funny, and adventure,” Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays floating head Madame Leota, told Entertainment Weekly about Haunted Mansion. “You know, it’s cooking. I barely cook, I attempt cooking all the time, and it’s all ingredients, and then the mix and the time, and it’s always hard to know, are you going to make something yummy? And from what I’m seeing, and what I’ve heard, Justin has made something yummy.”

Haunted Mansion is darker than the typical Disney movie, “but not scary like a monster movie,” she added. “It’s scary like a Disney ride, and funny. If you go on that ride, there’s a lot of humor as well as the scary, ghost-y stuff.”

Simien previously told EW that supporting actor Leto’s take on the fan-favorite Hatbox Ghost ride animatronic is a “menacing and terrifying” interpretation of the storied character.

“We got down to the point where we were obsessing over the angle you first see the mansion when you walk onto the ride in Disneyland, when we see it through the gates and we see the pillars,” he explains of framing the physical set for the film. “That angle has to hit. That’s how specific we were. When you first glide through the dining hall and you see the waltzing dancers, that angle had to be right, because that’s the one where you gasp on the ride.”

Haunted Mansion releases in theaters on July 28th.