It’s too bad then that Winchester is such a misfire, pardon the pun. The film was not screened for critics before release and it’s clear to see why: it’s a turgid, lifeless bore, its first two acts filled with loads of exposition and punctuated by the occasional cheap jump scare, while its final third is an onslaught of visual effects that renders an already pointless story mostly incoherent. With so many interesting horror movies coming out over the past couple of years, from both the mainstream Hollywood studios and the independent system, it’s almost surprising to see something so resolutely mediocre still get released. Helen Mirren stars as Sarah Winchester, the widow of repeating arms manufacturer William Winchester, whose loss of both her husband and small daughter seems to have pushed her into madness. The company’s board of directors hires a therapist named Eric Price (Jason Clarke), who’s immersed himself in drug use following his own personal tragedy, to ascertain Mrs. Winchester’s mental state and whether she is still fit to run the company she owns 51% of. Price travels to the Winchester House, which is under construction 24/7, where he meets with both Mrs. Manchester and her niece (Sarah Snook), also a recent widow who is staying there with her son. Mrs. Winchester is convinced that the souls of those who met their deaths at the business end of a Winchester are pushing her to build the house and recreate the rooms in which they died, so they can somehow return to the world of the living; Price, understandably, doesn’t believe any of this, although events begin to transpire that slowly change his view. Winchester was directed (and co-written) by Australian filmmakers Peter and Michel Spierig, who showed a flair for world-building with their 2009 breakout, Daybreakers, and exhibited a strong sense of narrative tension and intelligent conceptualization with their little-seen and very underrated 2014 sci-fi indie Predestination. But creating effective horror seems to fall outside their skill set: last year’s attempt to reboot the moribund Saw franchise with Jigsaw fell flat, while going in the opposite direction and trying their hands at an old-fashioned period ghost story with Winchester has not done them any favors either. What flair is exhibited in the interior design of the house never really sinks in either, as we spend most of our time in the same three rooms and see little of the other 100 or so. Bizarrely, Winchester’s heavy-handed speechifying about all the people whose lives were extinguished by the weapons that paid for the Winchester House may make it the first anti-gun horror movie in history. But social commentary is the last thing Winchester needs, especially when the movie turns pretty much into a shooting spree towards the end. Like some of the staircases and hallways that adorn Mrs. Winchester’s edifice, the movie twists and turns and ultimately leads nowhere. Winchester is out in theaters today (Friday, February 2).
title: “Winchester Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-22” author: “Alice Gunderman”
Subtitled as The House That Ghosts Built in some territories, this Australian-American co-production finds a very Hammer-esque character, doctor Eric Price (Jason Clarke), visiting Sarah’s enormous mansion in San Jose, California. He’s there to evaluate her mental health on behalf of her board of directors at the Winchester Repeating Arms company, after she has thrown herself and a lot of her money continuing construction on the mansion’s eccentric architecture in order to stave off vengeful spirits. Dr. Price, a former soldier, is sceptical of her story at first, but soon, he too has some close encounters with the victims of “the gun that won the West”. Sadly, much of that is squandered over the rest of the film. Mirren has been adamant in interviews that this is a ghost story, rather than a horror movie, but that doesn’t stop the film keeping all of the pre-loaded tricks in the multiplex horror handbook. The spells of ‘quiet quiet’ may last a little longer as the film rakes through its mythology with less enthusiasm than it warrants, but the ‘BANG’ bit is no less obvious. That lack of oomph is fatal and rather than keeping you on edge like most of these films manage, watching it becomes a real battle to stay awake. There are some pleasures in watching Mirren ham it up, but it’s not enough. Clarke is alright as the frazzled doctor, leading a supporting cast of Aussies that also includes Sarah Snook as Helen’s niece and secretary and Bruce Spence as a creepy butler, but the film lets all of them down. But once stuff starts getting really spooky, it wraps this up by echoing a certain idiotic maxim about guns from more modern times (the one about good guys and bad guys) with a clanging symbolic twist, all delivered with brainless sincerity. It’s the point at which the film goes from being flawed to downright exasperating. You really do feel you might have been better off going for a nice cold pint and waiting for all this to blow over. Winchester is a low-energy chiller that clearly has the makings of a prestige genre picture, but merely tries to repackage all of the usual tropes for an unfamiliar audience. The presence of a mutton-chopped Angus Sampson in a supporting role makes it worth mentioning that the still-playing Insidious: The Last Key is worth a look instead. It’s gratifying to see that we have two major horror movies where the protagonists are 70-something women, playing in cinemas at the same time, but one of these things is not like the other.
