Winchester is a 2018 movie about Sarah Winchester (played by Helen Mirren) who believes she is haunted by the souls of people killed by the Winchester repeating rifles. She is set to be evaluated by Dr. Eric Price (played by Jason Clarke) to determine her mental health as a shareholder in the rifle company. My Winchester (2018) movie review follows
The real Winchester house is really remarkable. Sarah Winchester who is the main character in this movie was a very wealthy woman. She built a house that had about 161 rooms with many rooms leading nowhere or stairs leading to ceilings to confuse spirits. This is a woman who had a list of carpenters building rooms 24hrs per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year for 30+ years due to her believing if she stopped making rooms, she would die. Whether you call her crazy or just eccentric is up to you. However, her belief built a house that is still visited today by thousands of people. It is considered one of the most haunted places in the US.
On the other hand, Winchester is a really dull movie. You don’t really need to look at reviews to get an idea of just bad the movie did. Generally I am a big fan of period movies, especially those set in the 18th and early 20th century. The fact that this movie also has some good actors/actresses also makes it a bit more enjoyable.
However, the problem that I have with this movie has to do with the story. In short, it is a dull story with a lot of pointless talking and loud jump scares. The whole genre of ghosts is played out so much that it rarely brings us a movie with genuine tension and scares. The premise is easy to reproduce and it brings people into theaters so they can jump every two seconds at doors slamming or “scary” ghosts popping out of nowhere.
Anyway, for the majority of the movie we have a doctor trying to evaluate a person’s mental health. She is on edge but trying to hide it and he is an addict that is unsure if he is on the level himself. This means one is seeing ghosts but nobody believes her. The other is also seeing ghosts but blames his addiction. When you partner them together you get a lot of talking involving spirits and being truthful so they can see eye to eye. The acting is great but the pacing is slow for a movie that isn’t really long.
On top of this the movie chose to deal with one family experiencing tragedy that involved Winchester rifle. This person’s backstory was extremely boring so I had some tough time keeping up with nothing going on. It could have been done in a better way as this person’s story doesn’t go hand to hand with this idea of a revengeful spirit. Only the most evil ones tend to stick around and this spirit didn’t seem evil, just revengeful. I am not downplaying the horror this person went through but it is not worth seeing it for 100 min.
Going back to the movie, we don’t see many ghosts. If we do, it is for a few seconds that are followed by loud noise. The movie likes to tell you when you should be scared and I find this to be really boring. Overall the movie is well done but it will most likely fall into obscurity. This is due to not attempting to do anything new we haven’t seen before.
Thanks for reading my Winchester (2018) movie review 🙂
