This is a film that doesn’t live up to its subject matter. Winchester is inspired by the real-life Sarah Winchester, the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune who was also as looney as a toon. In real life, Sarah became convinced that the ghosts of those killed by her company’s rifles were after her and the only way to thwart them was, naturally, to endlessly construct a mansion according to their architectural whims. The house, which is somewhere in California, was under construction 24/7 for decades and, due to a design plan derived primarily from the advice of ghosts, featured such anomalies as staircases that lead nowhere and doors that open outside to thin air. The real house is currently a tourist attraction, because all truly demonic places are open to tourists from 9 to 5. That’s not bad source material for a horror film. Unfortunately, it turns out to just be more of the PG-13, jump-scare bullshit that I see every few weeks and then question my life choices.
The film opens with the Winchester company’s board of directors hiring a drug-addicted psychiatrist (played by Jason Clarke) to investigate Sarah’s mental state. She still owns 51% of the company and the board is looking for a negative psychiatric evaluation to allow them to strip her of her controlling stock. This is portrayed as a slimy move on their part, but perpetual construction to appease ghosts is the kind of thing that would raise a red flag at a board meeting. So, Clarke goes to the mansion for a week to evaluate Sarah and discovers that the ghosts are indeed real.
As I said, there is potential here. However, that potential is squandered by the usual onslaught of clichés that have befallen almost every horror movie in the last 10 years. If you like jump scares, you are in luck. If you can’t tell that the camera frequently shifting to show a character in front of a mirror means that eventually there will be a ghost behind the mirror, then you are going to piss your pants. It really just amounts to people walking around and waiting for some boring-looking ghost to jump out at them. A little kid does get possessed for a while, so it also checks off that box in the list of shit I’m getting tired of seeing in horror movies. It seemed to work on the audience, though. There was a group of girls sitting in front of me with the combined IQ of a railroad spike that screamed at all of the correct, painstakingly foreshadowed moments. I often wonder, while sitting through movies like this, if teenaged girls scream at these movies out of actual fright or some odd sense of social obligation. But then I just have a drink and go on with my day.
I generally avoid any political discussions in my reviews (and wish that talk shows, award shows, professional sports leagues and every celebrity interview would follow my lead). But I expected this movie to be preachy and it is. Multiple references are made to guns as “indiscriminate killing machines” and I would certainly hope that’s true. All tools and machines are indiscriminate. If they weren’t, then Skynet is going live, John Connor is in trouble and we’re all doomed. But what’s really puzzling here is the combination of messages. The villain is the ghost of a confederate soldier who is upset that him and his fellow soldiers were killed by union soldiers using Winchester rifles. So, to be clear, guns are inherently evil even if they helped the north win the Civil War? So would the movie have preferred if the south won? Because that raises a few more questions. If anything, the choice of villain would imply that guns could be used for positive purposes, but the film seems oddly unaware of this contradiction. I also question the logic of ghosts haunting the wife of the man whose company manufactured the weapons instead of the people that, you know, killed them. Maybe in 50 years we will get a movie about the owner of the Tide company being haunted by the ghosts of dead, stupid teenagers. If I’m still writing reviews then, you all have a big “I told you so” coming.
Purely in terms of filmmaking, Jason Clarke and, especially, Helen Mirren are really above this moie. They both do a fine job with what they have to work with, but I’m curious what blackmail material the studio had on Mirren to get her into this movie. The film is just boring looking, which is really sad. In any classic haunted house movie (from the somber and serious The Haunting to the fun and schlocky House on Haunted Hill), the house itself is almost a character. It has presence and quietly creates spooky ambiance. Despite being based on one of the most notoriously haunted and bizarre houses in the country, the film’s co-directors (the Spierig Brothers, who last brought us the awful Jigsaw just this past Halloween) do nothing with the setting. If you told me that 90% of the film was shot in a single hallway using different camera angles, I wouldn’t question it. It’s an enormous wasted opportunity and just a boring film to look at.
This is just another safe, gutless horror film that you can send your 12-year-old daughter to see with her friends so they can scream and annoy an old curmudgeon like me. Tell them I’m the guy with the glazed-over look that is trying to suppress both rage and sleepiness and failing miserably.
By the way, any comments that attempt to engage me in a conversation about gun control will be deleted without response.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_(film)#/media/File:Winchester_(film).png
