She plays the title character, Sarah Winchester, who wears mourning clothes throughout this film which is set at the beginning of the 20th century. I was familiar with the premise of the story from my ‘Big Book of Weirdos’, but it’s fair to say that the writer of this effort took a few liberties with the plot and characters, hence the ‘Inspired by actual events’ title card.
The film is Australian but set in San Jose, California. I thought it was all sets and models but I see from the IMDb page that some scenes were filmed in the actual Winchester house which is now a tourist attraction. Most of the cast are Aussies however and the locations look a lot more Oz than L.A.
The real Sarah Winchester inherited the Winchester firearms fortune on the death of her husband. Her child died soon after and, feeling cursed, she set about trying to appease the spirits of those killed by her company’s products, whom she blames for her misfortunes. Rather than get in a good exorcist she chose to expand her home to allow the ghosts somewhere to stay. To keep them happy the building work continues around the clock and did so for more than 30 years before her death.
I can accept that this in itself may not be that an exciting film so the writer has chosen to imagine a lot of stuff including zombies and possession.
The story unfolds through the eyes of Dr Eric Price, a boozed up psychiatrist who has grief issues of his own. The board at the Winchester Company are worried about the mad widow spending all their cash and hire Eric to check her out and to see if they can get her ruled incompetent. Owing to large debts Price agrees but we get the sense that despite the boozing he has retained his integrity and he won’t just rubber stamp her ticket to the Nut House, as the board require.
Price is at first sceptical, but over the course of a few days he sees things that start to challenge his pre-conceived notions. Is the house truly haunted or is he suffering the effects of coming off the booze and drugs? Sarah starts off a bit standoffish with him but after a few experiences involving her possessed nephew, some common ground is found.
Can the possessed boy Henry be saved? - get rid of those milky contact lenses for a start! - and will Sarah be removed from her sprawling home and the company’s board? Will Eric find his own redemption or is he destined to haunt some old house himself?
I quite liked this film but it was, like the house, a bit of a mess with too much stuff tacked on and other bits going nowhere. It was good that they used the original house and the bits they recreated were well realised with stairs going nowhere and doors opening onto sheer drops. The sense that work was always ongoing was well done, although there was a lot of pointless hammering and painting onto bits that had already been completed - that’s tradesmen for you I guess!
Jason Clarke as Eric was good - you’ll recognise him as John Connor from ‘Terminator : Genysis’ - or maybe not; I can’t remember it either! His dishevelled haunted drunk act was decent but he was undone by lots of cheap scares as a zombie faces poked out every time he looked through a window or keyhole. Mirren looked like she was going thorough the motions, dealing with a script that was mostly complete bollocks. They left any pretence of dealing with a woman with mental health issues to having it a full on haunted house with bogey men in every room.
I guess they’d call it a re-imagining of the story but it’s a disservice to a troubled widow to have the cast of ‘The Walking Dead’ wandering through the house at all hours. There is an element of ‘is she mad?’ Is Eric mad? Is everyone mental, especially those who stick it out to the end?
Given a true life story was used here it seemed a bit off to have such extreme elements added - why not just do an original story without making a real one seem ridiculous? It was passable entertainment with nice sets and decent straight faced performances, but overall you came out knowing less about the story, with the facts lost amid a lot of supernatural gubbins and jump scares.
Best Bit : Room full of loaded rifles? Bound to end well.
W Rating 13/23
No comments:
Post a Comment