Winchester is the new movie based on the interesting story of the Winchester house in California. The house is a real place that the window Winchester had, over many years, built full of stairs to nowhere, blind hallways, etc. It’s rumored she was guilty over all the people killed by the Winchester repeating rifle and the house was built to confuse the vengeful ghosts.
It’s an interesting premise for a movie… a real biopic drama about the construction of the house and the psychology and guilt behind it. But less so a movie that posits there are real spooks. And even less so than this specific crappy ghost movie. The real house has tours which are certainly more interesting than this.
This movie is the apotheosis of jump scares. There are no attempts to create dread or suspense – every single attempt to scare you is a jump scare that you’ve seen dozens and dozens of times before. Ever. Single. Scare. It’s redundant, repetitive, and baffling since they had a pretty good premise to build on.
The movie stars Jason Clarke and, because they gave her a huge check, Helen MIrren. Since Mirren is in all the marketing but isn’t the star of the movie, you know this low budget flick got a win in the hiring department and slathered her image over the marketing for some borrowed legitimacy. Don’t be fooled… this movie is only good for her bank account. Maybe she needed a swimming pool and more power to her… everyone else stay away.
The acting is good, I guess. The main character played by Jason Clarke has a mysterious backstory that has a slight pulse when revealed. There’s a mother and her possessed boy who give it their all but they serve no purpose in the movie. Pointless and I feel sorry for them but I suppose they got paid too.
Stay away from this boring January movie that was smart enough to release in February. I have seen much worse horror movies… this is hardly the worse thing ever. But it takes a good setting and does nothing with it besides lazy, broken, repetitive, redundant, and pointless jump scares.
Score: 65