A Maldição da Casa Winchester

Two virtues define this film - Hellen Mirren. and the house. and , sure, the atmosphere, costumes, drops of fear and reasonable sketches of tension. the basic sin - it is one of many haunting house films. not a bad one, not a modest one, but one who has not the science to convince. not a bad fact but one who could not be so easy ignored . if you do not ignore the potential of story, the actors and the landscape. something missing is the ordinary conclusion after its end. what ? maybe the courage to say, in right manner, the right story. the science to propose a better script to good actors. and to explore the art of Hellen Mirren.

There's a decent story here about an alcoholic living in the Winchester house who can't tell if he's experiencing withdrawals or something supernatural. Jason Clarke plays Dr. Price, who is invited to live in the Winchester house to give Ms. Winchester an ongoing psychological evaluation. Thing is, he's an alcoholic and Ms. Winchester won't allow him to be intoxicated as long as he's living in her house. So when he starts seeing apparitions, are they hallucinations? Are they ghosts? Dr. Price doesn't know and neither do we. Great setup.

But the movie chooses to go the boring route instead. It sidelines the interesting character study for a contrived ghost plot filled with every horror cliché in the book. What would a horror movie be without predictable, lame jump scares. There's not a single decent scare in the entire movie.

Winchester was a frustrating watch. The potential is right there, but it clutches onto these tired horror tropes for dear life - as if a mainstream audience wouldn't appreciate a deeper, more psychological approach to the material over a haphazardly-constructed, derivative, haunted house flick. It's the studio mentality - make it for a million bucks, we make 20 times that. They don't care about the integrity of the script or the material itself, and neither should you. By the way, this is a true story where 98% of the story is made up. Contradiction? No, marketing.

Again, Winchester is not terrible so much as it is frustrating. And boring. Don't bother with this one.

This movie isn't bad but it doesn't seem to quite deliver on it's setup. With a few tweaks this could've been a very successful slow burn, Gothic 'ghost' story in the manner of 'The Innocents' and 'The Haunting". What those movies did was create a film with all the trappings of supernatural horror without ever letting you know whether the supernatural element is real. 'Winchester' teases with this concept through most of the movie and then goes full blown, over the top, Hollywood-Ghost-Spooktacular at the end.

The cinematography is very atmospheric. The acting is good and there's a few scary moments. A marked over-reliance on jump scares got a little tedious. I really don't think they took as much advantage of the location as they could've. They might've tried some disembodied Steadicam shots with scary music to set the mood. We needed to see more of the 'Mystery House'. We needed to feel the craziness of it. It should've felt claustrophobic and all consuming. People should've got lost in it. Well, they don't and we feel everybody could leave anytime they felt like it.

The portrayal of Sarah Winchester as the tortured, guilt ridden ghost appeaser falls short, as well. This is a woman who lost a child and husband and believes she's cursed but they don't really bring that performance out and I'm sure they could've. I mean you've got Helen F-ing Miren for cripes sake. Don't you think she could knock that out of the park?

This is one of times when I have to put it all on the director. I think this screenplay probably read very well. The thing that consistently seems to bog it down is bad decisions on where to take it. For what it was, it was entertaining. I just don't think it fulfilled it's potential.

While it is clear that The Spierig Brothers are familiar with all the haunted house horror story conventions, they, like Rob Zombie before them, do not seem to be able to effectively use them. A fondness for the genre does not translate into the ability to engage and frighten an audience.

Before anyone dismisses my review as being from someone who doesn't enjoy deliberately paced, creepy stories without a plethora of pyrotechnics, let me state that The Haunting (the original not the crappy remake) and 1944's The Uninvited are two of my favorite films. You don't need a large budget or special effects to make a scary film on the subject of a haunted house. Both Insidious and Sinister demonstrated that with good direction and a decent story you can scare the hell out of an audience.

While Winchester boasts some good actors and a wonderful setting that is fraught with possibilities, it squanders both on a tired story of ghosts looking for revenge, which completely ignores the real facts of the Winchester House. A couple jump scares accompanied by sudden music stings work to a degree, but there is no genuine feeling of suspense generated by the script, no growing sense of escalating dread. Instead we get acceptable performances and some nice looking sets as the actors go through their paces to little effect.

It's not a terrible film, but one which fails to raise the hackles and which you will quickly forget after leaving the theater.

I saw this during matinee it was worth the $8... Some of the spooky parts were indeed spooky. Not amazing, but not horrendous