PLOT SUMMARY: Four students are selected to study the infamous Mad Hatter Mansion that is supposed to be haunted.
If you've seen the Ghost Ship and Haunting of Hill House, and truly missed having those movies on your screen, well, here's a horror movie to make up for all that.
The Mad Hatter is by no means impeccably executed, nor does it have actors doing a great job with the script.
What you do have is a couple of scenes that will remind you of the scenes from the aforementioned cult movies.
THE MAD HATTER Movie Plot
In the first scene itself, a girl walking into an area where people are dancing. She's wearing a nightgown and has a ribbon in her hair. She just wants to take part in the party... the scene look familiar?
Of course, there are no bodies being cut in half but the revellers all perish in a fire.
Years later, a psychology professor is giving a lecture not on psychology but how the paranormal can affect the psyche. Or something like that. The students look bored and some of them appear bewildered. Clearly, they didn't pay to go to college to learn about burned buildings and urban legends but they have no say in the matter.
Ian and Val roll their eyes at each other. Henry is more interested in Chelsey than he is in the legend or whatever it is the professor is going on about in a dark room where only his eyes are shown to portray he is a character with sinister intentions.
Henry keeps staring at Chelsey who keeps smiling no matter what is going on. He either has a crush on her or is wondering why she does nothing but smile.
After class, Henry has visions of a girl in a white gown, drenched and staring at him. He is jolted by the professor who is taking him on a trip to the mansion where the legend of the Mad Hatter takes place.
The four students are given journals to write down everything they feel in the mansion. Apart from Chelsey, none of them do any writing and the Professor never bothers to check on their progress. As far as all of them are concerned, they are on vacation in a mansion where there are creepy looking butlers.
There is a detailed scene of them cutting up animals, scooping up the insides and making stew out of them.
But they are bad at getting all the bones and teeth out because that's the first thing that comes into Henry's mouth. Since he was busy ogling Chelsey he didn't check his stew and even when he does, he wants to retain his passive persona rather than complain about weird things he's finding in his stew.
The four students begin to have visions of their past. For Chelsey, it is her father who is looking at her accusatorily because she chose to go on vacation to a haunted mansion rather than take care of him.
For Henry, it is his sister who drowned while he fell asleep. She's the girl in the white gown Henry saw before.
Val had some issues with her foster mother and Ian's father was apparently abusive which gives Ian the permission to be a jerk to everyone.
After the four have their respective visions, they all sit down, bored and try on all the hats they find around the house. Chelsey reveals her sad story to her classmates and then they all go back to their rooms to be haunted by their fear and guilt.
And who is doing all this? The Mad Hatter of course.
The Mad Hatter Ending Explained with Spoilers!
It is then revealed that before he died, the man who wore the mad hatter costume was head of a cult who worshipped a deity to give eternal light and eternal life.
So the mad hatter lives on but he needs to consume souls and who is helping him? The professor.
Why? What are the perks of helping the mad hatter?
Just so he himself is not tormented by the mad hatter? Or is it so he too can live forever and work as a psychology professor?
The four are attacked by ghosts and creepy butlers and eventually the Mad Hatter comes for Henry because he has the most pitiful story of regret over choosing sleep over watching his sister who jumped into the lake.
In the end, the souls of the people are still dancing about but Henry is now the new Mad Hatter. Possibly because the mad hatter saw everyone try on his hat and thought Henry looked best in it. He doesn't really.
The professor, in the meantime, is back to his nefarious deeds; lecturing bored students about the legend of the Mad Hatter and then luring them into his lair so they can all die.
None of the other students or the staff at the college is even going to raise an eyebrow over why students disappear only when the professor takes them on a field trip. Is that even an authorised field trip?
The Mad Hatter unfortunately doesn't have any original content or scare scenes. Go ahead and give it a miss.
Scare scale: 1.5/5
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