What would a horror movie be without predictable, lame jump scares. It sidelines the interesting character study for a contrived ghost plot filled with every horror cliché in the book. But the movie chooses to go the boring route instead. So when he starts seeing apparitions, are they hallucinations? Are they ghosts? Dr. Winchester won't allow him to be intoxicated as long as he's living in her house. Winchester an ongoing psychological evaluation. Price, who is invited to live in the Winchester house to give Ms. 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. The cinematography (Ben Nott) and film editing (Mark Villa) is impressive but doesn't quite make up for the pedestrian direction by Michael & Peter Spierig. Superb makeup/prosthetics by Aracelli Frias/Samantha Lyttle on the deadly spirit and other ghosts. The House is perhaps the real star with set design/decoration by Michael Bell/Vanessa Cerne. Acting is generally good but this isn't Mirren's most demanding role, Finn Scicluna-O'Prey does impress as Henry. We get many of the usual nasty spirit tropes and a butler who resembles Lurch from The Addams Family. So the battle begins, this spirit is also a poltergeist and is talented at throwing people around. Eric finds that this won't such an easy job after all. But now a deadlier spirit (Eamon Farren) has arrived is possessing young Henry (Finn Scicluna-O'Prey), son of Marion Marriott (Sarah Snook), Sarah Winchester's niece and secretary. The rooms are for ghosts, when they finally find peace the rooms are demolished and the ghosts move on. Sarah believes that she and her house are haunted by the ghosts of victims of the Winchester repeating rifle. That doesn't bother the Winchester Directors but Sarah is also forcing them to diversify from rifles into manufacturing roller blades.
Sarah has been building a house for over 20 years, adding and demolishing rooms and wings, with construction teams working 24/7. The Board will double his fee if he produces the "right" report. They want him to assess the sanity of Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) who owns 51% of the company's shares. Psychiatrist Eric Price (Jason Clarke) is addicted to laudanum and living a dissolute lifestyle when he is offered a much needed job by the legal counsel for the Winchester Company. Never mind, the additions make for a solid if Winchester: Based on a true story but this telling is rather embellished. It's not a terrible film, but one which fails to raise the hackles and which you will quickly forget after leaving the theater. Instead we get acceptable performances and some nice looking sets as the actors go through their paces to little effect. 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. 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. Both Insidious and Sinister demonstrated that with good direction and a decent story you can scare the hell out of an audience. You don't need a large budget or special effects to make a scary film on the subject of a haunted house. 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. A fondness for the genre does not translate into the ability to engage and frighten an audience.
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.