Winchester (2018)
Sarah Winchester and her commodious tangle of a house seem tailor-made for horror. This woman died exactly a century ago and so many of her secrets went with her. We’ll never know much about her inner life or what specifically drove her to keep the workmen at it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for thirty-eight years. 2018’s Winchester was obviously looking to fill in some of the blanks. Or something like that.
It’s 1906, and a young San Francisco doctor, Eric Price, is invited to Mrs. Winchester’s San Jose estate because she’s reclusive and there are people who question her sanity. Imagine that. Ergo, Dr. Price will be staying in her big, sprawling house for a week and be paid handsomely for his time.
However, Eric’s told he can only stay in one part of the house and Mrs. Winchester’s quarters are off-limits. Her only housemates are her niece and secretary, Mrs. Marriot and her grandnephew, Henry, and everyone seems to know what Eric is doing before he does. Mrs. Winchester, for instance, knows that Eric is addicted to laudanum and has it confiscated, much to Eric’s chagrin.
Eric does the exact opposite of staying in his room, as the house is full of strange sounds at night, and it’s not just the workmen hammering. He sees ghostly and demonic figures peering at him from around mirrors and climbing up from basement stairs, which he initially chalks up to withdrawal symptoms.
That’s not the case, of course. Henry experiences demon possession and Eric becomes embroiled in Mrs. Winchester’s past, which is angry at her because her husband’s rifles were used to kill so many people. It all gets very Conjuring-like, only minus the crucifixes and rosaries.
Sarah Winchester is presented fairly accurately at the outset. She was known to walk among her servants wearing a black veil, and it’s cool that the first time we see her face is at the dinner table, when she lifts the veil and reveals her face very dramatically. I also liked that she’s made out to be a pretty sympathetic character who just wants to protect her family, no matter what.
And the filmmakers get the house right. Not only were the exteriors filmed at the actual mansion, but some of its interiors were featured as well, and what was recreated captures the flavor marvelously. Well, with the exception of the famous Stairs to Nowhere—the real staircases don’t quite look like the ones in the movie.
Too bad it’s all window dressing for a pretty cliched plotline.
I found it funny that the movie was set in 1906, because of course that was the year of the San Francisco Earthquake, and we know that the effects of that earthquake were felt as far away as San Jose. In fact, Mrs. Winchester was trapped in what is now considered an attic room during the earthquake and had to be rescued. She was so convinced the spirits were behind the earthquake that she sealed up the room, which wasn’t discovered and opened to the public until 2016. Yet the earthquake has no part in the story except for a needless and basically random little note at the end.
It would have been so easy to frame Mrs. Winchester’s real story, as much as we know of it, anyway, around her conversations with Dr. Price. Any blank spots in her story could have been compensated for by a handwave or maybe an imperious look. That movie would have been compelling.
Instead, we get mass amounts of unrealized potential. Mrs. Winchester doesn’t need embellishment. She doesn’t need demon possession, cheap jumpscares and angry ghosts shattering glass and throwing rifles around. All she needs is her own quirky, shadowy, confusing existence.
Winchester is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Rated
My grade: C
Principal Cast: Helen Mirren, Sarah Snook, Jason Clarke, Finn Scicluna-O’Prey, Emily Wiseman, Alana Fagan, Rebecca Makar, Tyler Coppin, Michael Carman, Angus Sampson, Alice Chaston, Eamon Farren, Laura Brent, Adam Bowes, Bruce Spence,
Directed by Michael and Peter Spierig.
Written by Tom Vaughan, Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig.