It really shouldn’t be so tough to transform Disneyland’s beloved Haunted Mansion ride into a robust family spookfest. The attraction boasts a cult of kookiness, ripe and ready for the picking. There are characters decades in the fine tuning and ingenious animatronic effects primed for direct transfer to cinematic fun times. Rob Minkoff’s 2003 effort plumbed heavy on undead slapstick, casting Eddie Murphy for rent-a-mouth zane. It’s a far more fondly remembered nostalgia dump than any film with barbershop busts has any right to be but did a least enjoy a certain exuberant energy. Two decades on, Justin Simien’s reboot lands dead on arrival. The only real scare this time is a realisation that this incompetent mess comes from the man behind Dear White People.

More depressingly, the new Haunted Mansion was originally born to the mind of Guillermo del Toro. Oh, what might have been. Ostensibly, the bare bones of Del Toro’s initial conceit remain here, swaddled in more palatable writing from one time Ghostbusters reviver Katie Dippold. A New Orleans setting pitches the titular mansion as the new buy of recently-singled mum Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her uptight young son Travis (Chase W. Dillon). Having upped sticks from New York, the duo ploy to turn Gracey Manor into a bed and breakfast, following a spot of DIY and TLC. Little do they realise the RIP set up they’re about to enter. Inert execution squanders the film’s ghoulish reveal, hashing a sequence with obvious potential for amusement. Christopher Landon’s We Have a Ghost did it far better earlier in the year – and he only had the one spook to play with.

Alongside this intro, a separate pre-titles sting nudges LaKeith Stanfield’s astrophysicist Ben towards the film’s emotional core. In quick succession, Ben’s burgeoning romance with paranormal tour guide Alyssa (Charity Jordan) segues to present day woe. Alyssa has died and Ben has turned to drink, wasting his days in a wasted haze. Likely driven by an urge to find definitive proof as to whether he will ever see his late wife again, Ben now leads Alyssa’s tour. By the time we join him, ghosts are a taboo topic.

That’s when Owen Wilson rocks up, in dismal autopilot mode as local priest and exorcist Father Kent. Wilson is so blandly disengaged from the material here that his part can’t help but feel entirely superfluous to the wider whole. It’s hard to believe the narrative trajectory would have been so different without him. Kent recruits Ben to investigate the paranormal goings on at Gracey Manor. Also employed are Harriet, a bonafide medium, who is played by Tiffany Haddish, and haunted house historian Bruce. He’s played by Danny DeVito, who at least appears to be having fun. The ghosts themselves are largely immaterial, even by spectral standards, but Jamie Lee Curtis makes her mark as head in a glass ball Madam Leota. Jared Leto voices the film’s big bad.

There are, truth be told, some half decent ideas floating about here. The notion of ghosts being haunted by ghosts is fine, while it’s an amusing sketch that sees Harriet nod off each time she attempts to communicate with the other side. Certainly, Haunted Mansion is not a film short on potential. It is, however, the execution that really lets things slide. The sense that Simien is out of his depth is palpable in a film that lacks directorial vision and is littered with very obvious errors. It’s a field day for those who seek out continuity failings. Dippold’s characters never seem to settle on a singular personality, while the handful of actively funny lines she has penned are delivered with an extraordinary dead ear. Watch in horror as they clunk without any thought for comic timing.

Weirdly, for all its flaws, Haunted Mansion finds some redemption in a final act that proves surprisingly adept in its handling of grief. Having spouted guff for the best part of ninety minutes, Simien and Dippold finally find something interesting to say. It’s not enough to save the film but does somewhat pull it from the grave. There’s a version of Haunted Mansion out there that is funny, scary, smart and emotionally profound. This isn’t it.