Haunted Mansion is hitting theaters this week, and it’s the latest Disney movie to tackle an iconic ride. The film was helmed by Dear White People director Justin Simien who recently spoke with ComicBook.com about touring the ride and the film’s many easter eggs. The new film takes place in the present day, but you may have noticed from the trailers that the characters’ costumes feel like they’re from another time. While chatting with Simien, we asked the director about the classic looks, and he explained the movie’s unique costume choices.
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“Well, I really wanted the movie to feel timeless,” Simien explained. “When I watch a movie like Clue or I watch a movie like Little Shop of Horrors, which I know technically takes place in the ’50s, or I watch Ghostbusters or Tim Burton, late ’80s, early ’90s Tim Burton especially, you have no sense of when these movies take place. You know it’s modern times because people act and talk like regular people do. But costume-wise, the car, it’s an amalgamation. And it’s sort of like, Hitchcock kind of invented this thing where you live in a movie world and it sort of allows you to give yourself over to the fantasy just a little bit more. And so that was definitely a philosophy that I came into it with.”
He continued, “But honestly, Jeffrey Kurland, who is the costume designer of this movie, is a genius. He’s a literal genius, and he ran with all of the suggestions that I gave them and took it even further. And the big thing for me, and I’ve been doing this since my first film, is when a character walks on the screen before they say a word, you should have an impression. It can be wrong. It can be absolutely right. It can be hilarious, it can be sad, but nobody should just be a wallflower, especially a lead character. They come on screen and you have an opinion about them just by the way they’re dressed. And without exception, Jeffrey Kurland did that.”
Is Haunted Mansion Too Scary For Kids?
During our chat with Simien, he revealed Disney was concerned some moments in the upcoming film would be too scary. However, kids in the test audience felt differently.
“There were some things that the studio thought would be too scary,” Simien revealed. “And then we started to screen the movie and the first folks in, we’d be like, ‘Is the movie too scary?’ Kids would raise their hands like, ‘No, I can handle it. We want more.’ And so eventually there were things that I truly didn’t think were, especially involving the Hat Box Ghost, and especially with some of the jump scares, that I wasn’t sure if it was really going to make it through, but it did because the kids wanted more of it. And I kept saying my first Disney movies, those are still the scariest movies I’ve ever seen. So I talk about Pinocchio becoming a donkey, Snow White getting lost in the forest, these things are terrifying. Like Simba losing Mufasa, these are scary moments.”
“And kids can handle it. And if you just respect them enough to handle the story, they can do it. And we just leaned into that,” he added. “Life is scary.”
Haunted Mansion lands in theaters on July 28th.
