Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Winchester Blu-ray Movie Review

They *all* see dead people.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 8, 2018

The seemingly endless debate over gun control that tends to rise up especially in the wake of shooting incidents often includes calls to hold gun manufacturers legally liable for the havoc their product can wreak, and in a way one of Winchester’s more interesting elements is how it makes the widow of the venerable Winchester Repeating Rifle impresario feel morally responsible for all the deaths her late husband’s company has caused. Unfortunately, perhaps for a couple of reasons, Winchester never really takes hold as either a ghost story or an anti-gun screed, two elements which might seem to be kind of an odd set of “ingredients”, but which in fact are rather well woven together in the screenplay by Tom Vaughan and The Spierig Brothers (the siblings also co-directed). What probably hobbles Winchester is its sillier aspects, which tend to make the scares too predictable and the lack of any ambiguity only more noticeable. The film seems to be moving in a direction kind of like The Innocents for a while, with at least lip service given to the “what is real and what is illusion” ambience of that Jack Clayton version of O. Henry’s Turn of the Screw, where it’s never quite clear (or at least debatable) as to whether ghosts are real (albeit supernatural) phenomena or simply the hallucinations of an addled psyche. Winchester starts with a fairly ham handed sequence, the first of several that feature concerned looking folks wandering through the labyrinthine hallways of the so-called Winchester Mystery House, a huge, sprawling edifice under perpetual construction at the direction of Winchester heiress Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren, evidently in the What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? phase of her career). Marian Marriott (Sarah Snook), Sarah’s niece, is sleeping with her young son Henry (Finn Scicluna-O'Prey), at least that is until Henry is awakened by a spectral voice singing Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer”. The next thing you know, Henry’s off wandering through those halls, with a burlap sack over his head (just cause it’s spooky, you know), and Marian is of course distraught and desperately running after him. That rote opening then segues to the introduction of Doctor Eric Price (Jason Clarke), a psychiatrist with a fondness for loose women and laudanum, though not necessarily in that order. Price’s revelry is interrupted by a messenger from the Winchester Board of Directors, which wants to hire Price to give a psychiatric evaluation of Sarah, who by all accounts has been acting eccentrically, if not erratically, as evidenced by the nonstop building of her ever burgeoning mansion.

There is some absolutely fascinating research on Sarah Winchester available online for those with enterprising Googling skills, and in reading up on her after having watched Winchester, I kind of wish some of the information gleaned from these articles (some of which at least appear to be well researched) had made it into the film. As with many historical characters, there seems to be a conflation of myth and real life in what is generally “known” about Sarah, but in some ways this film’s expected epigraph of “inspired by true events” does seem at least partially based on the actual historical record. Sarah evidently did have a strong spiritualist side, one fostered by the successive deaths of her infant daughter and then her husband, and there is at least some evidence that she was in fact troubled by the legacy of the Winchester rifle. Whether or not that actually led to the sprawling enterprise that ultimately became the Winchester Mystery House is still open to debate, but it at least provides the film with a substratum of authenticity, one that unfortunately some presentational aspects in the film tend to overwhelm with cheesy startle effects and hyperbolic encounters with denizens of the spirit world.

Virtually everyone in Winchester is afflicted in some way, and at least three of the major characters either see or at least sense dead people. Sarah of course is kind of an empath, having become convinced that the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles will haunt her if she doesn’t build rooms for them in her mansion. Price is traumatized after the death of his wife, a plot element that plays into the proceedings in increasingly unbelievable ways, but his use of Laudanum also makes him prone to visions, something that makes him at least question some early “sightings” he has at the Winchester mansion. Little Henry is at the Winchester home with his mother because his father (Marion’s husband) has died, but he, too, seems to be under the sway of some sort of spectral entity, as evidenced by the whole burlap sack over the head vignette that begins the film. It’s all kind of silly, actually, and by the time an expected reveal concerning a seemingly minor supporting character is trotted out for the supposed wonderment of the audience, things just tip into pure ridiculousness.

There’s both too much — in terms of too many competing subplots duking it out for running time — and too little — in terms of adequate development of some ideas, like the “13 nails” that keep spirits isolated in boarded up rooms — bouncing around the twisty hallways of the Winchester mansion to ever give the film enough breathing room to really have its intended effect. There are certainly startle effects here that offer passing (often ridiculously abrupt) scares, but there’s no sense of impending doom or suspense, and as such the film kind of plays like a museum piece. In that regard, the sumptuous production design at least offers something pretty to look at, at least until a ghost pops up with attendant LFE.

Winchester Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Winchester is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb doesn't list much data for this release, but some other online sources credit the Arri Alexa XT as having digitally captured the imagery. While some CGI elements, notably establishing shots of the house and continued brief looks at the nonstop construction, look noticeably fake, the bulk of this presentation has a really beautifully burnished and well detailed appearance, despite the prevalence of shadowy, often minimally lit, scenes. Some interior sequences are graded toward cool blues and grays, but detail levels are surprisingly well rendered even in darker moments. When the film ventures outdoor, the palette warms considerably, and fine detail on elements like the wrinkles in Sarah's face or a meaningful scar on Price's chest are precise looking. The Spierig Brothers and cinematographer Ben Nott do play with light quite interestingly throughout the film, often creating a bit of a hallucinatory ambience, sometimes around the edges of the frame (see screenshot 12 and look toward the right).

Winchester Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While it features any number of hackneyed effects, including but not limited to things going bump in the night and sudden bursts of LFE to provoke startle reactions, Winchester's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in undeniably effective. There's immersion right off the bat, before any imagery even lights up the screen, with various spooky sounds emanating from several surround channels, and there is repeated use of discrete channelization once Price gets to the Winchester house and begins exploring the twisting hallways of the place. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this predictable but still enjoyable track.

Winchester Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Driven by the Spirits: The Making of Winchester (1080p; 22:14) is a surprisingly good featurette with some interesting information about Sarah and some good interviews with the Spieregs, Mirren and Clarke.

Winchester Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Winchester has an impressive cast and really stupendous production design, but, somewhat like the Winchester Mystery House itself, it's kind of a sprawling mess. My hunch is gun rights advocates won't get past the opening couple of speeches by Sarah even if they're fans of ghost stories, and I also have to assume that general ghost story aficionados are similarly going to wonder what all the hoo-hah about Winchester rifles and their victims is about. The film offers a beautiful recreation of the interior of the Winchester house, but the exterior CGI is almost laughably fake looking at times. Lionsgate has provided a disc with excellent technical merits for those interested in a purchase.