As a horror concept is concerned, it appears the classic haunted house scenario is out of vogue. It’s all about mutilation now, or hunting someone down, or zombies – still, for crying out loud.

But having released a haunted house themed flick in 2003, with The Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy, those maverick Disney types decided that now was the perfect time to dust it down and give it a ghoulish refresh.

Looking for a fresh start in life is Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase Dillon), after her husband died.

They move to New Orleans and take on quite a project, a huge mansion. But they’re not long inside the doors before they discover somewhat of an issue – it’s haunted.

This is when Father Kent (Owen Wilson) approaches Ben (LaKeith Stanfield), who is suffering from grief of his own, who wants to hire his services, as he has a new-fangled spectral camera that can take photos of ghosts. Ben agrees, mostly due to the impressive payday, not expecting much in the way of anything, as he’s a man of science.

His tune soon changes however, as he is quickly confronted by an array of spirits, who are all rather riled by the situation in the mansion. He decides to stick around to help out Gabbie and Travis, as well as get help from a few other pro’s too, mainly Harriet (Tiffany Haddish) a psychic, and Professor Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito), a haunted house historian.

But does this ghost-busting team have what it takes to solve the mystery of this haunted mansion?

You would think that if any studio could pull off a fun haunted house story, it would be the house of mouse. And considering this is a re-boot of the Eddie Murphy film, it feels as close to a slam dunk as you can get. And yet remarkably, this misses even the rim by quite some margin.

The biggest issue is the script, that doesn’t flow particularly well, and doesn’t make much sense for the first half an hour of the film, which is very un-Disney. Part of the problem is this trend that studios currently have for hiring young talent to take on huge projects; some rise to the occasion and others, like Justin Simien here, clearly struggle. This is only his third feature and you get the impression it was just too big a deal to control.

He’s not helped in any shape or by a dreadful script, that’s about as lifeless as the ghosts that roam the mansion. It’s difficult to conceive that not only could they mess up a simple ghost house tale, but one that did pretty well for Disney the first time around.

It’s really disappointing as there’s a great cast here, headed by the excellent Stanfield in probably his most commercial project to date. Then you add the likes of Dawson, Wilson, Haddish and a rare role for DeVito, and you have a cast that really deserve better than this.

It’s certainly not helped by an overlong running time of just over two hours, which just makes it plod on for a completely unnecessary period of time, by at least half an hour, easily.

It has a few moments, rare as they are, as in the way the film deals with grief and death, which are certainly themes it could have explored further, but what do you expect when it can’t even get the basics right.

Visually it’s OK, but again, you would expect more than just average from Disney.

Considering its poor box office return, where it failed to even recoup its budget of around $155 million, it’s unlikely to spawn any kind of franchise in the future. So it’s not all bad news.

This is a Disney property that they should have got so right, but the only frightening thing about the film is how badly they got it all so very wrong.