Winchester
“Fear, in the end, only exists in the mind,” advises Doctor Eric Price, a pragmatic man who has been approached by Arthur Gates on behalf of the board of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to assess whether Sarah Winchester, wealthy widow of founder William Winchester who inherited his controlling interest, is fit to remain in charge of the company.
A reclusive eccentric of questionable sanity, since the death of her husband twenty five years earlier and their daughter Annie five years afterwards, Sarah has allegedly come to believe that she is cursed by the souls of those whose deaths are the result of the result of the fortune generated through the sales of firearms.
Obsessively extending the mansion in which she lives across the expansive estate, construction takes place endlessly around the clock, corridors, rooms, staircases and dead ends, while older sections are locked up and barricaded in hopes that she can stay ahead of the ghosts which haunt her and her remaining family.
Directed by the Spierig Brothers, Michael and Peter, the script co-written with Tom Vaughan is tenuously inspired by the real Sarah Winchester and her home in San Jose, California, which has come to be known as “the Winchester Mystery House,” founded in 1884 with work continuing until the death of Mrs Winchester on September 5th, 1922.
Regrettably, any hopes that this will be an insight into the psychology of such an interesting and driven individual are swiftly abandoned; rather than a character piece of substance and subtlety which might examine the burden of guilt and loneliness that drove a person to such actions, Winchester is a thrill ride aimed at the lowest common denominator of the multiplex audience.
The only alarm generated by how obviously the frequent jump scares are telegraphed, despite the crucial setting of the Winchester house which frames the story there is no attempt to develop it as a character in its own right, to move the camera through the labyrinth of passages and chambers to express how one could become lost in its incoherent complexity.
That opportunity to parallel the house with its owner eschewed, as Sarah Winchester the great Dame Helen Mirren is by far the best thing in the film, walking the corridors in black, the eternally grieving widow, a canny woman of sound mind who is the intellectual match of Gates but who nevertheless is genuine in her belief and sincere in her justified fear of “a wickedness that follows you like a shadow.”
Her assessor, conveyed by the tortured mumbling and grunts of Terminator Genisys‘ Jason Clarke, is unconvincing, his backstory which ties him to the Winchester family an awkward contrivance designed to lead into the overwrought finale which spectacularly misses the target despite the supposed accuracy of the titular rifles.
The supporting cast including Gods of Egypt‘s Bruce Spence and Mad Max: Fury Road‘s Angus Sampson as Sarah’s loyal and devoted majordomo and the head of construction alongside Twin Peaks‘ Eamon Farren as a surly servant, they are given no more than is absolutely necessary to advance the pedestrian plot, but none are so wasted as The Dressmaker‘s Sarah Snook who was so powerful and moving in the Spierig Brothers’ brilliant Predestination.
Shifting to a dreary possession subplot, at almost a hundred minutes Winchester does not even have the grace of brevity, avoiding anything which might approach depth despite the many doors which should have been opened to air the rooms beyond, those holding the arguments for and against gun ownership and the responsibility of those who manufacture and sell them, but despite the setting and the history this weapon is firing blanks.
Winchester is on general release from Friday 2nd February
