Winchester | In Cinemas Now | ★ ★
Dame Helen Mirren delves into the supernatural in Winchester, a film filled with ghostly spirits and more creaking floorboards than any other movie of the horror house genre.
In San Jose in 1906 the board of the Winchester Repeating Arms company hires Doctor Eric Price to conduct an mental health assessment of Sarah Winchester, the widow of the company’s founder.
The reclusive multi-millionairess lives in an enormous house and is rarely seen in public, Price agrees to spend several days at the residence to determine if the old lady is mentally fit to control the majority of the rifle manufacturing company.
The house is enormous, builders work day and night to add more and more rooms on to it. It’s a haphazard maze of add-ons and extensions, sprawling outwards and upwards. There’s odd clock towers, endless corridors and wood paneling for days. No sooner have the builders finished one room, than the mistress of the house orders it to be torn down and something new put in its place.
Price stays overnight in the house with the widow, her daughter in law Marion, and grandson Henry. He begins to see things, but he’s not sure if it’s ghosts or side effects of the medication he’s been prescribing himself.
The most amazing part of this tale is that its real. Sarah Winchester really did build a ridiculous house of hundreds of rooms, and it’s still standing today. The belief that the reclusive widow built rooms for all the ghosts of people killed by the rifles that he family sold is juicy source material for horror filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig.
Jason Clarke plays the investigative doctor, he’s one of several recognisable Aussie actors in this Australian / US co-production. Sarah Snook plays Marion, while Eamon Farren, who previously appeared in Carlotta plays a servant in the house.
The film has its fair share of high tension moments and things that go bump in the night, but it’s a plodding and meandering journey to get there, and you jest end up spending considerable time asking why Helen Mirren signed up to be in this movie, before summarising that the pay check probably paid for a new gazebo.
The source material is far more interesting than the finished product, just head to the Wikipedia page about the Winchester House, it’s incredibly more entertaining.
Graeme Watson
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