The story of Sarah Winchester, infamous heiress to the
Winchester Repeating Arms company fortune, is a fascinating one: growing
despondent after the death of her infant daughter and then her husband, Sarah
(played here by Helen Mirren) moved to San Jose in the late 1800s. There, she
purchased a modest property, turning it into a massive seven-story mansion
which she continued to obsessively build and expand until the day she died.
Without an
architect to oversee the plans, construction of the house was so fast that the
result was a labyrinthine collection of rooms on top of rooms, with doors and
stairways that often lead nowhere. The construction was so haphazard and
strange that rumors began to spread of Sarah’s belief that her family was
haunted by the souls killed by Winchester firearms, and only by continuously
building these spirits a place to live could she appease them.
It’s from
this incredible setup that “Winchester” takes its inspiration, beginning as a
skeptical psychiatrist (Jason Clarke) is sent at the behest of the Winchester
estate to evaluate Sarah’s state of mind. Instead, he finds himself drawn into
her unsettling world.
Horror has
always been a way for us to grapple with real-life fears through a supernatural
lens, and melding the ghostly elements of this story to the country’s legacy of
violence and addiction to guns could have yielded some rich material. But the
makers of the film — brothers Michael and Peter Spierig
— squander all that potential with bland and clumsy execution, relying on
endless exposition punctuated by predictable jump scares. Not even the esteemed
Helen Mirren can help, and as a result, “Winchester” seems destined to go down
as one of the most disappointing films this year.
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2018.
