Winchester 2018

Before I start discussing the movie Winchester (2018), I want to talk about the Winchester Mystery House that it is based on. It is a mansion in San Jose built by Sarah Winchester, of the Winchester Rifle fame. She believed that she was haunted by all the people - especially Indians - shot by her company's guns. She thought she could avoid these spirits by continually building a confusing mansion with stairs leading nowhere, doors that opened to walls and windows between rooms. It is now a tourist attraction that we've never visited, although we only live a few miles away. When we moved here many years ago, we thought about going and found out it cost $17 - a fortune in those days. Who knows how much it costs now?

Anyway, we can see it in a movie now.

We meet louche psychologist Jason Clarke at his home, doing laudanum with two whores. A representative from the Winchester company comes with a business proposition: Interview Mrs. Winchester, have her declared unfit to manage the company, and be paid handsomely. He resists, but they offer to pay his debts and opium bills, so he finally agrees.

Although the makers did get permission to shoot at the house, I think we see him show up at the CGI mansion. It’s a beautiful gingerbread contraption, but he immediately senses strangeness. He hears thumping coming from a cabinet, which turns out to be a hidden door and the maid is cleaning the other side. But that night he sees more scary stuff that can’t be explained so easily. Of course, he has had a nip at the laudanum...

But when he meets Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren!), she sternly lets him know she does not hold with the “soldier’s disease”, that is, abuse of opiates, and makes him go cold turkey. That does not make the apparitions go away.

So that is pretty much the rest of the movie: the cast is pretty much Clarke, Mirren and Sarah Snook as Winchester’s daughter/secretary, and the little boy who is her son. They all experience more or less violent apparitions and possessions, until the San Francisco earthquake knocks down half the building. That’s OK, though, it was perpetually under construction anyway.

On the positive side, Mirren is great as always, and the look and setting are sumptious. Also, this is a real ghost story, with real scary spirits, not one of those “she’s probably just crazy - or is she?” type movies. On the negative, it’s all kind of scattershot and unfocused, and it doesn’t add up to much in the end. Also, of all the angry spirits killed by the Winchester, only two or three are Indians, plus a few slaves. Needs more Indians.