Well, this is a film I didn't expect to see at the cinema. Seriously, I would have expected Winchester to not get a release to my local cinema at least, much like films like The Belko Experiment or Raw. Hell, even Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri only got a week's worth of general release and that was only after it swept the Golden Globes. I suspect, somewhat cynically, that Helen Mirren being in the lead role as Sarah Winchester is what's gotten this movie its wide release.
It's 1906 in California. Psychiatrist Eric Price is asked by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to provide a psychological evaluation of Sarah Winchester, widow of the company's founder and majority shareholder - and the rest of the board are hoping to have her declared unfit so they can take her position away from her. Sarah is certainly very eccentric - she keeps her house in San Jose in a perpetual state of construction, day and night, building and demolishing rooms in the house in attempts to appease the spirits of all those killed by the Winchester rifle, whom she believes have cursed her family. Certainly, by that alone Sarah Winchester could be considered paranoid and delusional... but almost from his arrival at the house, Doctor Price starts to experience and see strange things and figures. Is it all just due to his use of laudanum, or is there actually something to Sarah Winchester's beliefs? And if there is, can Doctor Price protect her and her family from the vengeful spirits in the house who want to destroy the Winchester family for their perceived crimes?
There are, I feel, three types of jump scare movies. There are the ones that telegraph every little thing, stretching it to breaking point and leaving no surprise or shock whatsoever - that's your Bye Bye Man types. Then there are the ones that technically do it well, and would be legitimately scary if not for the orchestra abuse they also commit - that's your Annabelle: Creation types. And then there are the movies that make you think you know when the jump scare is coming, and you're just about to sigh in frustration at another predictable "scare"... and then suddenly the scare comes from somewhere else entirely, with no musical sting or telegraphing, and you're all of a sudden aware that you probably shouldn't have drunk all that water before the film started. That's this film, and yes, I'm surprised as well. I honestly wasn't expecting too much from Winchester, and while it's not a great film - if nothing else, after a couple of the jump scares that actually made me jump, it started to be a bit of a case of diminishing returns (also, I went to the bathroom during a talky bit) - it's certainly an above average one.
Winchester is, of course, another "inspired by actual events" movie, in that Sarah Winchester really did have her house in constant construction mode because she believed it was the only way to placate the spirits of those killed by Winchester guns. Today the house is a major tourist attraction and claims to be one of the (if not the) most haunted houses in America. Everything beyond that in the film is entirely fictional, and how much you believe of the legend is up to the individual, although it does seem that just about every "ghost hunting" TV show has done an episode in the real-life house (I'm guessing that they're not allowed to anymore, as Lionsgate bought the photography rights to the house along with the movie, so now any footage taken of the house would be in direct competition with the movie).
The film is directed by the Spierig brothers, who also directed last year's Jigsaw, and if nothing else Winchester shows that they can do tension and scares quite effectively, which I don't think we really got in that previous film. However, the film gets rather bogged down in a couple of subplots that could have done with being trimmed down or even removed entirely - one involving Eric Price's dead wife and another involving Sarah Winchester's niece and grand-nephew - in favour of perhaps some more stuff involving the ghosts inhabiting the mansion, because what little we saw of them really intrigued me and I would have liked to have seen more of them. But as I said, it was surprisingly better than I expected it to be, and after so many years watching horror films and developing a mental callus against jump scares, it's always a pleasant surprise to find myself jolting upright in my seat again.
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