Winchester Review

PG13: For violence, disturbing images, drug content, some sexual material and thematic elements

Lionsgate, CBS Films

1 Hr and 39 Minutes

Dir: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig | Writers: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig, Tom Vaughan

Cast:  Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, Sarah Snook

INTRO: You might be released in February, but you’re still a January movie to me. When you are a studio who don't give anyone screenings and have critics such as myself use our Moviepass to see your film, you’re asking for an ass whooping. 

Inspired by true events. On an isolated stretch of land 50 miles outside of San Francisco sits the most haunted house in the world. Built by Sarah Winchester, (Academy Award (R)-winner Helen Mirren) heiress to the Winchester fortune, it is a house that knows no end. Constructed in an incessant twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week mania for decades, it stands seven stories tall and contains hundreds of rooms. To the outsider, it looks like a monstrous monument to a disturbed woman's madness. But Sarah is not building for herself, for her niece (Sarah Snook) or for the troubled Doctor Eric Price (Jason Clarke) whom she has summoned to the house. She is building a prison, an asylum for hundreds of vengeful ghosts, and the most terrifying among them have a score to settle with the Winchesters.

THE GOOD

The Winchester family are wealthy and you can see it though their clothing. The only positive I can say about this movie is two things: the costume design and Jason Clarke. This is Jason Clarke’s movie, and he does a decent job carrying it on his own for he is the main guy we follow and works well with the material he’s given. 

The wardrobe that these characters wear are so good that you question if that was the only thing the studio spent most of the money on. I like the look of Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester and the black widow dress she wears throughout the movie. They don’t do anything with it, but I do like the way how it looks.

I am digging a very deep barrel with this movie and I'll be damned if I'm unable to give it any compliment that I can.

THE BAD

Aw how cute. Lionsgate really wanted their own little "Conjuring" franchise.

Maybe I’m officially desensitized. Maybe all of my fears have been tested. I don’t know whats wrong. I like horror movies, and I get scared quite easily. Usually, in horror movies, even the bad ones, I tend to have my fingers in my ears or hands over my eyes. Maybe I’ve accomplished all of my fears that horror movie don’t even scare me anymore. 

Or maybe—
Just maybe —
This movie blows.

With “The Conjuring” director James Wan was able to infuse a stylistic visual flair to make the scares feel fresh and organic. Besides the scares having a great set up and execution, the characters made it work. We cared about the Warren couple because they were likable and good at what they do. Even the families that they helped out were likable people who had a shared motivation to get these evil spirits out the house.

Here, you feel nothing. It's not that these characters are poorly written, but nothing exciting is going on with any of them. Jason Clarke’s character, Eric Price is actually interestingly compelling, but his stakes feel so low that every flashback he has doesn’t feel earned. By the end where he is supposed to learn a lesson, it just feels forced and not so relevant to the story at hand. Its a mystery that just walks the wide line of blandness.  

In the introduction of "Conjuring," we see the Warrens talk to spirits and effectively do their job. Here we have Price who is a known spiritual therapist, but at the beginning of the film, we don’t see him do the occupation that he was called to do. He’s just bumming out with the ladies, and we’re just supposed to go with the fact that this damaged guy who gets spooked real easily can talk and see ghosts? 

The house is supposed to be the house that spirits built and the evilest activity that one of the ghosts is capable of doing is possessing people to sketch out art for a room. Oh yeah, the rogue spirit is amazing at interior design. 

Absolutely none of the jump scares are effective and for multiple reasons.  I give it the benefit of the doubt that the build-up to the scares are decent, but the execution is just so predictable that even the blaring background music doesn’t even work. The execution is just absurd where  characters look into a dresser or a closet and then someone else pops out. And when a supernatural jump scare occurs its somebody in poor makeup.

The main reason why a lot of jump scares aren’t scary? It's because of how this film was shot. The production here is the same of a Blumhouse picture, but at least Blumhouse knows how to give cheap films a theatrical look. For some reason, this movie has everything except a good cinematographer. The lighting is done so bright that it degrades the effect of the scares. Horror movies tend to play with darkness whenever it attempts to give the audience a chill. Nope, everything is just crystal clear.  I don’t want to say that this CBS Films production has the camera quality of something that looks something that belongs on CBS but……..it does.

This is where the movie went wrong: making it a horror thriller. If this were a supernatural drama, this would've been a more compelling narrative. The story about the Winchesters is interesting. Unfortunately, they diminish it to a cheap horror flick that isn't scary at all. This is literally the PG13 miscarriage mashup of "The Conjuring" and "Insidious" that forgot to add any chills, thrills, or any frightening elements whatsoever. The only thing that I can say about the movie to its benefit is that its short and moves like a breeze. The entire thing is dull and uninspired but God its pacing is rightfully fast. 

After the movie, I saw a wife run behind the theater to scare her husband, and he got startled. There I asked, “Was that scarier than the movie?” and he said “YEAH.” 

LAST STATEMENT

“Winchester” is the cinematic equivalent of a kid and his group of friends going inside their well-known neighborhood haunted house. After going inside to get a thrill, they realize that there’s nothing relatively haunted about it and have completely wasted their time doing it.

Rating: 1/5 | 21%

Super Scene: Eric faces his past.