Watch horror Movies for free with Amazon Prime

Winchester

Winchester review
2018
5
Director: 
Michael Spierig/Peter Spierig

SYNOPSIS: 

Firearm heiress Sarah Winchester is convinced that she is haunted by the souls killed at the hands of the Winchester repeating rifle. After the sudden deaths of her husband and child, she throws herself into the construction of an enormous mansion designed to keep the evil spirits at bay. But when skeptical San Francisco psychiatrist Eric Price is dispatched to the estate to evaluate her state of mind, he discovers that her obsession may not be so insane after all.

REVIEW: 

What horror fan doesn’t love a good haunted house story – especially one based on real people, places, and events? That’s Winchester in a nutshell.

If you’ve ever been to San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House (or heard of it), then you’re already somewhat familiar with the backstory to Winchester. Also known as “the house that ghosts built”, the Winchester Mystery House was built by Sarah Winchester, widow of William Winchester, inventor of the famous rifle. After her husband and daughter both pass away, the grieving Sarah becomes convinced that she’s haunted by the many ghosts of those killed by Winchester firearms. She decides that the only way to appease them is to keep her San Jose home under constant construction and she did exactly that until her death.

Today, the Winchester Mystery House is a popular tourist destination and local monument. It has approximately 160 rooms including 40 bedrooms, 47 fireplaces, 17 chimneys, and 2 ballrooms. It is definitely one of the stranger American homes in existence today and some say it’s still quite haunted. But how well does Winchester do justice to this mysterious monument and the strange, troubled woman who lived there back in 1906?

We’ll start by pointing out that this film isn’t just directed by the Spierig brothers (Michael and Peter). It’s written by them as well. They’re also responsible for the latest installment in the long-running Saw franchise, Jigsaw. That said, while it’s clear they’ve tried to rein in their somewhat splashy filmmaking style here, a touch of it is still very much present, particularly in the dialogue. At times, the characters remind you of people in an old Hammer horror film as far as how they talk and interact – not entirely a bad thing, but also a bit distracting when it comes right down to it.

Helen Mirren is the type of artist it’s always a pleasure to see, but she’s woefully underutilized here. As much as her mere presence on the cast list wants to suggest otherwise, Winchester really isn’t about acting or artistry. It’s all about ghost effects, shock scares, and rather predictable supernatural special effects. Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but may be disappointing if you’re going into this hoping for more than that.

Winchester is entertaining enough, especially if you’re a fan of Mirren’s or simply interested in seeing the infamous Mystery House on screen. However, it also has no real idea what kind of film it’s trying to be. It tries to deliver the depth you’d expect from any other Mirren vehicle, but it doesn’t quite follow through on what it promises a more cerebral viewer. On the other hand, its really not scary enough or shocking enough to impress most hardcore horror fans either. There are definitely worthy things about it that make it worth a watch – like the lush visuals and interesting color palettes – but a new classic in the making, it’s not. Do check it out, but keep your expectations on the low side.

OTHER MOVIES REVIEWS

Martyrs movie

Martyrs

2008

Watching MARTYRS is like staring into a blast furnace.  Pascal Laugier’s film is a smoldering cell of anger and heat and hate and marvel.  It’s difficult to watch head on and downright painful to endure over time.  To be honest the experience is one I hesitate to recommend.  However, one must be impressed by the effect of it, impressed by its ability to inflict such engineered torment, impressed that the film can survive its own extreme internal pressures.  Laugier’s is an escalation game, vying not to push past boundaries, rather to set up... Read More

Calvaire movie

Calvaire

2004

This film's English title is The Ordeal, which is absolutely right, but the literal translation - Calvary - turns out to be worryingly appropriate too, for reasons I can hardly describe without toppling away from my keyboard in a dead faint. It is a brilliant black comic nightmare about a singer, conceived in the style of Deliverance or The Hills Have Eyes, and Calvaire triumphantly proves that when it comes to subhuman degradation, Belgian hillbillies from the EU can proudly hold their own with throwbacks and knuckleheads from the US. The sacrificial hero-victim is a... Read More

The Asphyx

The Asphyx

1973

The quest to cheat death is a familiar one in horror fiction, and Sir Hugo Cunningham, the protagonist of The Asphyx, belongs to a long tradition of mad and semi-mad scientists driven to unravel the secret to immortality. Set in the 1870s, The Asphyx details how Sir Hugo (Robert Stephens), a country squire with interests in photography and parapsychology, discovers the film’s titular spirit. In a series of photographs he and his associates have taken of people as they die, he discovers each features a mysterious smudge seemingly not caused by either faulty equipment or... Read More

House of 1000 corpses

House of 1000 Corpses

2003

Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses has nostalgia on its side but not much else. Pretending the last 20 years of teen slasher flicks never existed, Zombie creates a strange burlesque cocktail that reimagines The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by way of Vulgar. Four teenagers go chasing after an urban legend (Doctor Satan) in backwater USA and meet strange with an ex-prom queen (a busty Karen Black) and her immediate family. The kids have to wear masks before they can chow down on Halloween dessert and soon find themselves rubbing shoulders with several... Read More

Judy movie

Judy

2014

Let me start off this review by saying that I am not a fan of clowns. I don’t mean that in a “I flip out when I see them, they’re so scary” kind of way. I mean that I think they’re boring and overused. Thanks to Stephen Kings’ Pennywise (from It) and northern Illinois’ John Wayne Gacy, we’ve been inundated with clowns in our horror for the past thirty years, and every time it looks like they’re going away, they’re right back in our faces with the Insane Clown Posse and a flood of unoriginal, over-the-top clowns-as-killers horror films. It’s rare that any movie with clowns... Read More