"Winchester" Movie Review!

So I saw "Winchester" last night.

Now I wouldn't normally do movie reviews. I am not a movie critic. I have no professional background in film analysis.

But this is "Winchester" for crying out loud. It's a movie based on the House that I still love with all my heart, on the woman who I've long considered one of my heroes. Of course I was going to go see it. I had to. So I went with my friend and fellow former Winchester tour guide, Hannah, who you may remember as one of the former tour guides who visited Mrs. Winchester's grave in New Haven with me.

And sure, artistic liberties were taken - they always are when historical events are put to film - but did it live up to the Winchester name? Was it any good? Was it worth the $17.50 I spent on a movie ticket?


The movie opens in April of 1906 not with Mrs. Winchester, but with my beloved kindred spirit, Marion Marriott. Her son Henry is doing the horror movie creepy child schtick, walking in a trance from the bed he shares with his mother to the staircase to the ceiling. And right away, we have run into some baffling choices on the movie's part.

First off, where is Frederick Marriott? The movie states he has died, but Marion and Frederick had only been married less than a year in 1906, and he certainly wasn't dead. Second off, the couple had no sons, only their adopted daughter Margaret who came much later. Third off, the staircase to the ceiling's location in the House is nowhere near any of the bedrooms, certainly not near the bedroom thought to have been Marion's. The bizarre geography of the House seems to be something the movie struggled a lot with, actually...

After this creeptastic opening, we cut to our main character, a Dr. Price who is not a historical figure, but someone made up for this movie. He's a disgraced psychologist who we learn was once shot by a Winchester rifle (because of course he was) and has subsequently become addicted to painkillers. He is asked by a lawyer for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to evaluate Mrs. Winchester's mental state so they can take the company from her, since she still owns half of it.

It's an interesting angle, to be sure. At this point, one wonders how sympathetic this movie is going to be to dear Sarah Winchester.

MOM

I'm just going to come out and say it - casting Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester is the best possible choice this movie could have made, despite its other shortcomings. Mirren has, in every interview given about the role, been nothing but sympathetic and respectful to Mrs. Winchester's memory, and that respect really comes through in her performance. She captures Mrs. Winchester's grief over the losses of Annie and William, but makes sure that Mrs. Winchester never comes off as weak, even when she is (SPOILERS) being shot at by a possession victim brandishing a Winchester rifle.

Mirren's Winchester is sharp minded and spunky and spirited and stubborn and all the things that Mrs. Winchester should be on the big screen. And both Marion and her foreman, John Hansen, are portrayed as unflinchingly loyal to her every whim, defending her at every turn to Dr. Price, who is quickly won over to Winchester's side as well.

That is important. My biggest fears when this movie was announced was that they were either going to make Mrs. Winchester a villain, or that they were going to portray her as "crazy", as many old TV programs have the unfortunate tendency to do. (These old TV programs conveniently forget that the spiritualism they malign her so much for was really fucking popular in the Victorian era, and if Mrs. Winchester had attended seances, this wouldn't have been seen as odd at all.)

But despite what the lawyer man at the beginning tasks Dr. Price with doing, Mrs. Winchester is never portrayed as crazy. Even her belief in the spirits of the Winchester rifle deaths (which is probably a historical inaccuracy but I'm not surprised they went for it in a horror movie) can't be considered crazy when the movie presents them as actually haunting the mansion.

Another thing I liked about the movie, as long as I'm being positive here, are all the little nods to actual Winchester history. Like Dr. Price flipping through a catalog to a page advertising Winchester roller skates, something the Winchester company actually produced (though, unlike in the movie, this wasn't actually Mrs. Winchester's idea).

I screamed

There were other fun little nods as well, things like the lock of Annie's hair in Mrs. Winchester's safe (though the safe itself has been moved from its real life location in the Grand Ballroom to a fictional library room) and lingering shots of the Ballroom's Shakespeare windows and a servant call box in one of the kitchens. Marion pointed out, at one point, the innovative servant call tubes that Mrs. Winchester had installed, as well as that the small steps on the easy-riser staircase were because of Mrs. Winchester's arthritis.

That was all a lot of fun. It was clear they did their research.

But for all that, it wasn't a perfect movie.

It wasn't bad. The aesthetic was on point, and it was a lot of fun. But for all that, it was still a run-of-the-mill ghost movie, complete with the requisite jump scares. Setting the climax during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was a smart move (and Hannah and I definitely screamed in the theatre when the front chimney came down), but the rest of the climax - with the ghostly villains tormenting Mrs. Winchester and Dr. Price and Marion and her fictional son - crossed the line into over the top cheesy, to the point where the theatre we were in was filled more with laughter than with screams.

And that, I think, is the fault with "Winchester". It works just fine as a period place. But as a horror movie, not so much. It's entertaining, but aside from a few cheap jumpscares it isn't going to frighten anyone.

It was worth it to see all our old coworkers' names in the credits though!

All in all, I did have fun. I'm glad Hannah and I saw it. I'm glad the movie exists. But it was about what I expected, quality-wise, which is just okay. Not bad, definitely nowhere near as horrible as it could have been, but it's not gonna be winning any awards anytime soon.

Still, the hope that because of this movie, more people are going to know the real Mrs. Winchester was an amazing woman...

To me, that is worth every flaw in the run-of-the-mill script.

We love you, Mrs. Winchester!

Go see it for Helen Mirren. Don't go see it to get scared, or to learn the layout of the House (THAT STAIRCASE IS NOWHERE NEAR THE GRAND BALLROOM YOU GUYS), but for a sympathetic onscreen portrayal of Mrs. Winchester? That, at least, the movie got very right.

Signing off for now,
Nym