I’ve been fairly quiet during this year’s horrorfest and it’s been largely because of my plans to finish Haunting Of Hill House(Which will be starting on October 20th) but my friend Alyssa asked if one of us would watch this film and give a small review. I was excited because I’d wanted to see this when it first came out but I’m sad to say that this film left me incredibly underwhelmed. I’m probably being a bit harsh due to my bias of horror films but this one just didn’t come up to my standards.
See, I’m difficult to please in Horror films because it’s a genre that is full of mindless jump scares and derivative storytelling. Now, I’m fine with an homage but most of what you see in this film is something that has been done before and was done better. When I was told that it wasn’t as scary as some would like, I was hoping that it meant that there would be more of a psychological aspect as opposed to a traditional horror film. Unfortunately, it meant that the scares weren’t well executed.
The story is about Sarah Winchester, the heiress of the Winchester Rifle Company. She believes that she’s being haunted by the spirits of the men and women who’ve died by her family’s rifles. The company hires a psychiatrist to assess if she is mentally ill or not and if they focused more on Sarah then I would’ve loved this movie. I personally would’ve preferred to see her wrestling with what is real and what isn’t throughout the film but instead we see Sarah in complete control and a solid mental state pretty much from the first time we see her. Helen Mirren plays Sarah beautifully as she does in every role. Jason Clarke plays opposite her as the Psychiatrist who’s assessing her and he does a good job but I feel like he doesn’t serve nearly as much of a purpose as the film wants you to think he does.
I wasn’t really drawn into this movie at all until around 50 minutes in and that was when we learned more about the house that Sarah was building and I felt more of a connection through just these few conversations between her and Clarke’s characters than I do throughout the rest of the film.
The finale was laughable in a lot of ways and it was boring in comparison. I enjoyed that we finally started focusing on the other Ghosts and honestly, I wanted to see more of them. There’s a scene where we have Runaway Slaves, Native Americans and Civil War Soldiers all standing together and those are the stories I’d like to hear and see more of from this film, which is why it’s truly a shame to have this happen in the last 20 minutes.
Overall, even with a strong Performance from Mirren, I just cannot recommend WInchester. The entire film feels like a wasted opportunity and I wish they had done more with the unsettling atmosphere of the house and the idea of a psyche that is truly bereft of peace. That’s the film I would’ve wanted and that’s the film I was longing for while watching this.
