*** outta *****

3 outta 5

With so many horror movies being released, it’s pretty fun to see a Gothic Horror Throwback in the really effective and slickly made Winchester.  Considering directors The Spierig Brothers made the good looking but blah Jigsaw just a few months ago, this is a considerable improvement.   If anything, this film is afflicted with an exceptional amount of exposition about the overtly intricate details of how the ghosts are haunting the house.  However, that exposition is delivered by some pretty good actors who usually don’t play in these types of genres.  It has very old timey style which makes the movie rather distinctive from most horror efforts.  There’s a bit of an anti-gun message here, however, it can’t be entirely anti-gun because the film is resolved with an exceptional use of firepower. 

In 1908, widower Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) has inherited her husband’s fortune from manufacturing Winchester riffles.   However, the board of Winchester executives believe she is quite mad as Sarah has spent her fortune putting additions to her mansion as a way to combat evil spirits.  Seeking her ousting, they ask Doctor Eric Price (Jason Clarke) to certify her as insane, which he accepts because he needs the money due to being a drug addict and is recovering from the tragic loss of his wife and his own shooting.  Arriving at the sprawling, awkward, perpetually renovated Winchester House, he meets Sarah’s niece, Marion (Sarah Snook) and Marion’s disturbed son.  Despite not believing the ghost story, soon Eric is seeing spirits and hearing things go bump in the night.

Now if Winchesterhad actors with less thespian skill it might be tedious but the power duo of Mirren and Clarke makes the film exceptionally better.  Neither have done a horror genre film before so it’s interesting to see them in this as they make it believable.  There’s a palatable pathos to Clarke’s drug addled wretch of a doctor who manages to keep things on the up and up in public but in private he’s completely sideways.  So when ghosts start appearing he doesn’t know if it’s actually happening, rambling to himself that the drugs have afflicted his mind. 

The script delivers a compelling reason why he’s so tortured.  It is pretty silly that Sarah has shelves of books devoted to people murdered by Winchester weapons but it does lead to a point where she has in her files that Eric was shot by a Winchester. Sarah asks Eric how it felt leading to a great bit when he admits how horrible the experience was.  The ghosts and his past all come together in a haunting scene that is surprisingly effective and emotionally resonant. 

Mirren as Sarah makes the seemingly insane woman rather sympathetic. She is weighed down with guilt over the bloody gunfire that has built her fortune which adds thematic depth.  Sarah explains she adds rooms to the house from designs given to her by spirits so they can recreate the locations where they died and the spirits will either be satisfied or locked away if they are angry.  While that is an incredibly convoluted reason to have Sarah keep building at her house, Mirren conveys this as a tragic compulsion.  Workmen pounding away at the mansion 24 hours a day creates a sense of constant disorientation. 

The introductory scene to the variously hammered in rooms in the grand house is pretty interesting, doors open to nowhere, and rooms are stacked on top of rooms and then torn down.  There’s a winding, short staircase that’s shown in an overhead shot that looks downright odd which Eric appraises as simply “How… unusual.”   The same staircase is later a set for a scene where someone is menaced by a random shooter which feels nicely claustrophobic. 

Snook as the niece is politely terse with a stiff, formal manner of speaking.  The freaky kid does freaky stuff which is almost required in the genre but it works as he does weird stuff such as throwing a sack over his head and aimlessly wandering.  Later on, the whole thing about the sack over the head has a fantastic payoff.  Eamon Farren is a creepy servant with a gangbusters scene about of his back story.  He also gets in a moment where the servant is saying simple plot exposition stuff but then it turns in a second to become a scare.  There’s a few nicely constructed jump scares like when Eric is fiddling with a misbehaving mirror that won’t stay still.  The finale actually has a good amount of gunfire mixed with the supernatural, which is cool because the movie is sort of about the guilt and death that can come with guns but features gunfire at the end anyway because it looks neat. 

Winchesterhas a lot of style and moodiness which carries it along.  Having two very serious actors in the film give it a sense of gravitas.  It is a little silly but Gothic Horror movies can be like that anyway.  At least the scares are good and the theme of penance for gun violence profiteering is a strong one.  And every once in awhile, a ghost yells really loudly.