sooo sick of every disney haunted mansion movie just being ‘ouugh family moves in but something spooky starts to happen’,, it’s tired as hell. if i was directing a haunted mansion show/movie it’d be like this
so there’s a trio of main characters, but the most conventional hero one is a young master gracey. he’s a direct descendant of ghost host master gracey, and has moved into the mansion specifically to renovate his ancestral family home. he cannot see ghosts, and is blindly optimistic (he shakes a skull out of a hatbox in the attic and assumes that they must keep halloween decorations up there) and lucky enough to avoid every death trap in the mansion without realising that they’re there, so he’ll like bend down to pick up a penny and totally miss the huge axe swinging over his head. he’s into the supernatural, and thinks it’d be super cool if ghosts were real. he regularly says this while surrounded by ghosts. he’s dumb as hell but very nice. he’s tried live-streaming parts of the renovation process, and is extremely confused by all the horror enthusiasts his videos seem to be attracting
the main reason he isn’t dead yet is the groundskeeper’s kid. the groundskeeper has realised that if he minds his own business, he won’t have to deal with ghost shenanigans, but his kid is fascinated by the ghosts and the house, and trying to research them. for their part, the ghosts see them as kind of a funny pet. the kid has a skeleton key to every door in the mansion, can see all the ghosts, and mainly acts as a mediator when Gracey obliviously annoys one of them in his renovation efforts
the third main character is a direct descendant of constance hatchaway, and wears a string of pearls she inherited from her. constance left the mansion by possessing her pearls, and has been micromanaging her legacy ever since. she wants young hatchaway to marry and kill young gracey, retaking the house, so young hatchaway shows up, pretending to be lost, and asks to stay in the attic. the groundskeeper’s kid gets nothing but bad vibes from her, but gracey is totally oblivious and happy to let her stay. however, much to constance’s dismay, he’s just as oblivious to young hatchaway’s advances, and she basically ends up getting roped into his renovation efforts and grudgingly becoming real friends with him. gracey knows about constance’s story, and jumps to completely the wrong conclusions about everything. she got a new string of pearls to remember each husband? how romantic! and how tragic to lose four husbands! poor constance!
being around constance lets young hatchaway see all ghosts, but when she isn’t there, her ghost vision is much worse. every ghost in the mansion is totally aware of her intentions with gracey, and supernaturally sabotaging the schemes that his luck doesn’t deal with first
ghost host gracey is still around, and forms kind of a supernatural peanut gallery with constance when she isn’t being the main villain. he’s deeply embarrassed by almost everything about his descendant. the rest of the ghosts are fond of the kid, and are mainly just living their best afterlives
what i’m saying is that rehashing the same vanilla haunted house plot is stupid when it could be a much more fun and original ghost comedy. use the potentially interesting characters you have to inform new ones
