Movieguide, a faith-based family entertainment organization, is warning parents to avoid the latest Disney film, Haunted Mansion, due to its “unbiblical” content that deals with the occult.
The film, released on July 23, is a remake of a 2003 movie starring Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jared Leto.
“HAUNTED MANSION has a strong occult worldview and false occult theology,” a Movieguide review of the film states. “This unbiblical content is slightly mitigated by some positive moral, redemptive elements. For instance, it has a strong mother figure in the boy’s mother. However, HAUNTED MANSION’s ending is too occult and unbiblical. Hollywood would do better if it takes a Christian, biblical approach to the supernatural, like the movie NEFARIOUS.”
As reported by The Christian Post, the review argues that the movie features a “strong occult worldview and false theology, with images of ghosts and references to seances and people speaking to the dead.”
As the film progresses, “the protagonists defeat the demonic ghost villain and serial killer by tricking him and performing an occult incantation. The movie has two medium characters, and dead people can decide to stay on Earth as friendly ghosts.
“Theologically, HAUNTED MANSION doesn’t make much sense,” the review continued. “It has a strange, false occult worldview whereby some ghosts or spirits of dead people can just hang around the world for as long as they want. Meanwhile, the movie suggests that good spirits go to some occult kind of Heaven, while evil spirits go to some occult kind of Hell.
“Although the protagonists in HAUNTED MANSION are trying to defeat an evil, demonic villain, they solve the plot problem in the movie’s climax by using occult means and trickery,” Movieguide concluded. “Like much of the world, Disney has never had a proper biblical theology about ghosts and the occult.”
“As with all sin, dabbling in the occult is rebellion against God and, ultimately, demonic. Horror movies, even comical ones that don’t link ghosts to demons, lead people far astray. The ending to HAUNTED MANSION is just too occult.”
Overall, Movieguide gave Haunted Mansion a “-4” rating, the lowest possible score on Movieguide’s “Acceptability Ratings” chart, and told readers that Haunted Mansion is “to be avoided” because of “intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems.”
In an article published on August 1, Movieguide argued that Haunted Mansion’s lackluster performance at the box office had to do with its content. On opening weekend, the film made just over $24 million, which Movieguide described as “one of the lowest starts among Disney’s live-action remakes or reimaginings of theme park attractions.”
Photo courtesy: ©Disney, used with permission.
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
