La Malédiction 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.

While I did like a little bit of the film, the story of Ms. Winchester was just so inaccurate. (Skip to paragraph 2 if you don't care about accuracy) I live less than 20 miles from the Winchester house and have been there multiple times and know the story. First of all, she wasn't building the house to protect herself from attacking spirits, she was building it out of guilt to help the spirits she supposedly communicated with, and while the film briefly touches on that, the majority is her building the house to protect from evil spirits, which is untrue, it was guilt and she was building it to serve as a home to spirits . She also wasn't an ominous and foreboding old woman who always wore black in a haunted house, by all accounts she was a normal and social woman who held many community events and parties at her house. But besides that the film was hit an miss, some good scares and atmosphere, and some not so good.

Helen Mirren did an alright job with her role and the rest of the actors were also very average. The atmosphere was well done, but good direction is not needed because the house itself is beautiful and mysterious. The scares are hit and miss, out of about 12, only 2 got me, but I'm a horror veteran, a group of teenage girls however screamed multiple times. Some scares work because of the accented atmosphere, but some are pretty lame and predictable, making the film an average chiller with noting very special. Over all the film is just another average effort for a Hollywood horror film that does not shine like other better films.

I would not recommend this to horror veterans.

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

For those who want factual history, "Captive of the Labyrinth" by Mary Jo Ignoffo is an excellent biography of Sarah Winchester, who probably was not interested in ghosts, but rather in architecture, a field that did not invite professional participation by women. Sarah Winchester's father manufactured decorative architectural features for Victorian houses, and his factory was right next door to her childhood home -- so Sarah grew up intimately exposed to the physical details of building houses. As an educated rich woman, building her house was an expensive hobby she loved and could afford to pursue. She also incorporated the newest technology - elevators, showers, etc. - into the house, and managed a productive fruit orchards and a dried fruit business, and . I thought the movie did a good job of including some factual information based on the real Sarah Winchester, and accurately portrayed her as responsible, not crazy, and deeply caring for her family, As for the lurid sensational haunted house story, this was concocted by those who bought the house after Sarah Winchester died, and turned it into a money-making tourist trap. That said, I enjoyed this fictional ghost story, which explored deeper themes than I would normally expect from a supernatural horror genre flick. There does seem to be a heavy handed message about gun violence -- however, I agree with that message; it's more than timely..

This film has nothing to do with the cathedral city in Hampshire. When William Winchester, the owner of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, died in 1881 he left his vast fortune to his widow Sarah, making her one of the wealthiest women in America. Soon afterwards Sarah Winchester left her home in New Haven, Connecticut and moved to San Jose, California where she began building a vast, sprawling mansion. Work on the house continued until Sarah's own death in 1922. The building, today known as the Winchester Mystery House, still exists and is a popular tourist attraction; it is noted for oddities such as staircases and passageways which lead nowhere. It is said to have been left unfinished at Sarah Winchester's death, but it lacks any coherent plan and probably never would have been "finished" even if its owner had lived for many more years.

That much is fact. For many people, however, the main interest of the Winchester Mystery House lies in the legends which have grown up around it (and, indeed, had started to grow up even during Sarah's lifetime). It was said that the house was haunted by the ghosts of all those who had been killed by guns manufactured by the Winchester company and that Sarah's obsessive compulsion to add yet more rooms to her ever-growing house was in fact an attempt to placate them. The mansion still has the reputation of being one of the most haunted buildings in America.

The film, which is set in 1902 and has Sarah Winchester as its main character, assumes that the legends are true. (A supernatural horror film based around the assumption that ghost stories are all a load of superstitious nonsense would not, I suspect, be a great success). The officers of the Winchester company, still based in Connecticut, have heard rumours that Mrs Winchester, who still holds a controlling interest in the company even though she lives on the other side of the country, has gone mad and that she believes herself to be haunted by evil spirits. They therefore appoint Eric Price, a psychiatrist, to examine her, hoping that he will declare her to be insane which will allow them to remove her from any position of control in the company. (Was Price's surname chosen in homage to the late Vincent Price, a noted actor in horror films?)

Price is that familiar figure from horror films, the sceptic who is proved wrong. He initially believes that ghost stories are all a load of superstitious nonsense, but his acquaintance with Sarah Winchester and her extraordinary home soon persuades him to change his mind, and it becomes clear that he and Sarah are indeed threatened by vengeful spirits. Particularly malevolent is the ghost of a young man who, to avenge the deaths of his brothers, Confederate soldiers cut down by the rifles of the Union army, killed several employees of the Winchester Company at their headquarters and was in his turn shot dead by the police.

The film received largely negative reviews from the critics, but I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I was going to. The cinematic ghost story can be a predictable, cliché-ridden genre, but "Winchester" brings a certain originality to it. Whereas the likes to "The Haunting in Connecticut" and the recent rehash of "The Amityville Horror" tried (very dubiously) to pass themselves off as "true" stories, "Winchester" builds upon an intriguing blend of true history, legend and outright fiction to produce something of much greater interest, a story which does not leave the viewer with a "seen-it-all-before" feeling. The film-makers were greatly assisted by their coup in persuading an actress as distinguished as Dame Helen Mirren, an actress you wouldn't normally associate with haunted-house horror movies, to star in the leading role. She invests Sarah with a good deal of dignity, making her a woman who is eminently sane, even if much of the world believes her to be mad. Dame Helen receives good support from Jason Clarke, an actor I had not previously come across, as Price, a man haunted by a personal tragedy, and one which he shares with Sarah. "Winchester" does have its share of horror clichés, including the normal spooky music and camera tricks, but overall it is one of the better recent examples of the genre. 6/10