Back in 2003, Disney released Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, their most successful film based on one of their theme park attractions by virtue of spawning a money-printing pentalogy. That same year, mere months later, Disney would also release The Haunted Mansion, based on the theme park attraction of the same name. Although the film would actually break even at the box office, with about $180 million earned against a $90 million budget, the film’s negative reception among critics, with a meager 14% on Rotten Tomatoes, would turn me off from watching it in the two decades since its original run. That would change with this blog’s yearly celebration of the Halloween season. While by no means a masterpiece, I now firmly believe that critics were too harsh on the film the first time around.
