You ever see an actor in a movie and wonder to yourself, “Why them? Why this movie?” It’s hard to imagine Dame Helen Mirren in a movie like Winchester, the ghosts-'n-guns chiller from the Spierig Brothers (who also did Jigsaw.) It almost seems beneath her, and yet she's another in a long line of respected actors who bring their A game to a film that doesn't really deserve it. This isn't to say that Winchester is a bad film. I've seen a lot of bad movies; Winchester is creepily effective, but not terribly innovative. It's almost like a period-piece Sixth Sense, though without nearly as good an ending.
It’s April of 1906 and a psychoanalyst, Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) is hired by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to assess Sarah Winchester (Mirren), the eccentric widow of the company’s founder and a major shareholder of the company. It seems Lady Winchester has been building a mansion in San Jose for years, with work going round-the-clock constantly adding new rooms. It’s all for the sake of the so-called “Winchester curse” — the house is haunted by victims of Winchester rifles, with the intent of containing them. This is all historical, by the way — there really is a Winchester mansion, which the film was shot in, and the widow really did build it for that reason. It’s ripe material for a good old fashioned ghost story. And a good old fashioned ghost story it is, as Price increasingly comes to realize that it’s not his laudanum addiction making him see things, and learns how his relationship with death, in particular the death of his wife, tie into all this.
It’s
a good yarn, a nice gothic tale with elements of possession, and themes of death and
rebuilding. The house itself is gorgeously weird with its almost organic
construction and maze-like layout, lovingly portrayed in all its
strange, haunted-house charm by the Spierig Brothers. Unfortunately, like a lot of the most promising movies of the last thirty to forty years, it all comes unraveled as the protagonists battle a particularly
malevolent ghost, who’s got a serious grudge against the Winchester
name. Several elements come together a bit too tidily, and the film’s
reliance on shopworn ghost tropes comes to a head here. It’s implied
that the fury of this ghost was enough to cause the 1906 San Francisco
earthquake, which shatters the house and turns it into a battleground
for the final confrontation; it’s a neat touch, but not enough to make
up for how pedestrian the ending is.
The
soundtrack also has its pedestrian moments, with scare chords at
appropriate moments to remind the audience that this film is supposed to
be scary; in between, however, it’s a moody, strings-heavy atmospheric work that reminded me a little of the original Resident Evil.
It’s not the worst ghost movie you’ll ever see, and it’s worth it just for Mirren as the earnest, spiritual Lady Winchester, but for a movie about such an iconic haunted house the house itself isn’t much more than set dressing, taking a backseat to a contrived haunting plot.
-june❤
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