At first glance, Winchester seems to be anything but typical haunted house fare. Boasting an impressive cast headlined by Helen Mirren and helmed by the Spierig brothers (Daybreakers, Predestination, Jigsaw), it’s sourced from one of the America’s most intriguing true horror stories. As the story goes, Sarah Winchester—widowed heiress to the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company—insisted that her family was haunted by the spirits of those killed by the company’s arms. To combat the curse, she erected a chaotic, byzantine 7-story home that remained perpetually under construction until she passed away in 1922, and the structure still stands as an alluring tourist attraction to this day. Clearly, there’s an incredible horror movie to be gleaned from this material; unfortunately, this take isn’t it, as Winchesteris painfully typical ghost movie junk, even if it is masquerading under the pretense of unearned prestige.
Winchester herself isn’t even the central figure in her own story here. Instead, that distinction goes to Eric Prince (Jason Clarke), a fictional doctor who spends his days tripping on opium in San Francisco. Despite this, however, the Winchester company sees him as the perfect candidate to investigate the curious case surrounding their heiress, who has holed herself up in her cavernous mansion. Sensing an opportunity to wrest control of the company from her, they dispatch Prince to determine if she’s mentally fit to be in charge of the company. What they don’t know is that Prince harbors his own trauma that will intersect with the bizarre events unfolding at the Winchester mansion.
In spite of the setup here, there’s never any ambiguity surrounding Sarah Winchester’s claims. Almost immediately, it’s revealed that her home is, in fact, quite haunted, as the Spierigs roll out the usual assortment of haunted house parlor tricks: shadowy figures, sudden jolts, objects moving mysteriously, etc. To their credit, the Spierigs don’t stage a full-on assault with this stuff: most of the jolts are patiently built towards, and it’s clear they value atmosphere over staging an endless sequence of scares. All these good intentions can’t compensate for how familiar Winchester is, though, and the drawn-out, suffocating verve renders it even more lifeless. At a certain point, the jolts start to feel like a courtesy to an audience that might need to be jostled a bit.
Adding to the familiarity is a subplot involving a kid in peril that may or may not be possessed by one of the spirits haunting the house. In many ways, Winchester just feels like a grab bag of recent haunted house fare, right down to Sarah and Prince’s attempt to figure out exactly which spirit is raising hell, a turn of events that has them delving into the heiress’s extensive files to uncover a sordid backstory involving a confederate soldier. It’s fine but feels especially perfunctory after four Insidious movies have explored similar territory—and with much more style and energy to boot.
Eventually, this doesn’t prove to be enough story, so the plot circles back around to Prince’s own cryptic backstory. Throughout the film, he’s haunted by memories of a dead wife, and Sarah eventually pulls the entire story out of him. Unsurprisingly, the interplay between Clarke and Mirren is one of the film’s strengths: if there’s anyone who could make this rote material seem more interesting than it is, it’s these two, and I particularly like how Mirren’s Winchester isn’t presented as a stereotypical loon. From her first encounter with Prince, it’s clear that Sarah Winchester is in charge here: she admonishes him for his drinking habit and makes it clear that she’ll be in full control of this investigation. In fact, she reminds him that, in a roundabout way, she’s actually his boss on account of owning the company that’s hired him to be there. If nothing else, this is a well-performed recitation of a tired routine, I guess.
What’s frustrating is that Winchester does have all the makings to at least be invigorating in some way. In a vacuum, some of it sounds like a total hoot: for one thing, it’s one of the very few horror movies that tries to coax a scare from a gag involving a roller skate. Likewise, few ghost stories climax with an earthquake like this one does, and I’m guessing even fewer conjure up the boneheaded solution offered here: see, it turns out that the best way of ridding yourself of an unvanquished spirit who died due to gun violence is to…shoot it again? I have no clue how this dumb movie isn’t as fun as it sounds, but something tells me that its prestigious air works against it: Winchester looks to well-burnished and mannered to actually yield to any fun impulses.
As such, you’re left with a lifeless dud: Winchester is an inspired bit of production design desperately trying to feel like anything other than a husk of a film. The infamous mansion itself is immaculately replicated here, and the Spierig’s wisely luxuriate in the labyrinthine structure’s dead-end hallways, bizarre staircases, and claustrophobic corridors. It’s a character in and of itself, though I did find myself wishing its chaotic structure were more gracefully threaded within the story itself. We’re never really even treated to a scene where anyone is lost within this huge, suffocating maze. There’s a great, subtle, psychologically-driven take to be mined from the Winchester lore (think a turn-of-the-century Session 9 that also manages to find something to say about this country’s problem with gun violence), but this version is more preoccupied with surface-level scares and grisly lore.
Ultimately, it feels perfunctory in more ways than one: not only are there plenty of movies that offer similar scares, but the actual Winchester attraction also offers pretty much the same thing. Even if this film serves as a substitute for those who can’t visit, it’s a rather hollow recreation that feels like a huge missed opportunity.
