Dillon as her son Travis, and Tiffany Haddish as psychic Harriet, alongside white actors Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis as Madame Leota, and Jared Leto as the Hatbox Ghost. Director Justin Simien, whose prior work includes Dear White People, explicitly pushed for a Black lead and ensemble to reflect the city's demographics and culture, describing the vision as making the film 'as Black as possible' and calling the diverse group confronting the supernatural 'radical' for cinema, while insisting it was authentic rather than political.

The core plot follows a widow and son hiring spiritual experts to exorcise ghosts from their new home, uncovering the mansion's tragic history involving grief, a crystal ball medium, and the villainous Hatbox Ghost—standard haunted-house comedy-drama tropes with no central identity-politics framing, systemic-oppression narratives, or lecture moments. Minor promotional controversy arose over white sage imagery on posters, but content itself adds Black ghosts to match the setting without altering established ride characters' races or making diversity the premise. Reception noted box-office underperformance amid mixed reviews focused more on product placement than messaging.