Movie Review: Winchester

Winchester * ½ / *****

Directed by: The Spierig Brothers.

Written by: Tom Vaughan and The Spierig Brothers. 

Starring: Helen Mirren (Sarah Winchester), Jason Clarke (Dr. Eric Price), Sarah Snook (Marion Marriott), Finn Scicluna-O'Prey (Henry Marriott), Emm Wiseman (Nancy), Tyler Coppin (Arthur Gates), Michael Carman (Frank), Angus Sampson (John Hansen), Alice Chaston (Clara), Eamon Farren (Ben Block), Laura Brent (Ruby Price), Bruce Spence (Augustine).

 

Since their invention, horror movies have often been used to smuggle in political messages that filmmakers would never be able to make in a more overt form. It’s a long tradition, that continues right up until today – Jordan Peele’s Get Out works so well because he found a way to bury a timely message into a horror film to name but one recent example. The difference between the films that do it well, and a film like Winchester, is that those other films find a way to wrap it up in an entertaining story, interesting characters, and genuine scares. Winchester has a political message alright – and its one I happen to agree with, in that guns are killing machines and they are too ingrained in American culture. You could use this as a jumping off point for a good horror movie – but the Spierig brothers Winchester doesn’t do that. It plays more like a screed than a film – and one without anything going on beyond that message.

 

The year is 1906, and Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) owns 51% of the Winchester rifle company, passed to her by her late husband decades before. Her only child also died years ago, and she now spends all her time in her San Jose mansion. When she bought it, it was a normal house – but she has now turned it into a maze of sorts. She is constantly having rooms built and torn down, and the house has grown unwieldly. She also has interesting ideas about the way she makes her money – she thinks guns are evil, and that the blood of all of its victims is on her hands. She keeps track of all their names in books on her shelves. And yes, the constant construction does have something to do with them. The Board of Directors thinks she’s gone nuts – and hired Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke), getting over his own trauma, to evaluate her – hoping she’ll be declared crazy, and they can take the company from her.

 

What follows is a series of haunted house style scares – many involving the child of Winchester’s niece, Marion (Sarah Snook). The scares don’t really work – they aren’t particularly inventive or original, and basically trade on cliché. You would think having a setting like this strange house would be a goldmine for Production Design (when I think about what someone like Guillermo Del Toro and his team would have done – see Crimson Peak, a film I liked more and more, I weep). The cast is talented, but they’re going through the motions here – Mirren doesn’t seem invested at all, and Jason Clarke seems bored. Snook is perhaps a little better – she was the best part of what remains the Spierig’s best film (least seen) film Predestination, but her character here is underwritten.

 

Basically, it seems like everyone involved wanted to make an anti-gun horror movie, and didn’t really think through how best to do. Make no mistake, a film with this premise could work wonderfully. But it would have required more imagination than anyone involved here seems capable of.