Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Directors: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig, Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Cast: Helen Mirren, Sarah Snook, Jason Clarke, Laura Brent, Angus Sampson.
This lukewarm gothic thriller (about gun violence) can still be classed as being original, which does leave you wondering about the extent to which people can be eccentric.
Oscar-winner Helen Mirren (The Queen, The Madness of King George, Gosford Park, The Last Station) plays the real-life historical character Sarah Winchester. She was the turn-of-the-century California widow whose late husband, William Wirt Winchester, left her a 50% stake in the Winchester Repeating Arms Co.
Sarah was an American heiress who amassed great wealth after the death of her husband. She is best known for using her vast fortune to continue construction for 38 consecutive years on the Winchester mansion in San Jose, California.
A spirit seeker who kept building rooms onto her haunted mansion, Sarah was convinced she was cursed, and the only way to alleviate it was to add on to her home. The seven-storey high house appears to know no end. Having been added to for years, it looks like a monument.
However, Sarah is not building it for herself, for her niece (Snook) or for the troubled Doctor Eric Price (Clarke) whom she has summoned to the house. She is building a ‘prison an asylum for hundreds of vengeful ghosts and the most terrifying among them have a score to settle with the Winchesters’.
In the main role, Mirren speaks in an American accent and has a voice that evenly contains clarity. Her black crepe dress is buttoned up to her neck, and her silver hair swirled into a Victorian bun. Sarah sees ghosts everywhere, but she isn’t scared of them. She wants to help them. They’re the spirits of people killed by the rifles invented by her husband.
Haunted by the spirit of gun control, this story is set in 1906.
Winchester mansion is a designated California historical landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
