Winchester Reviews

Since this movie had a rather lame reputation, I wasn’t expecting much but since it was available on Videoland, I thought I might as well check it out anyway. Well, first of all, to be honest, I have to admit that I had never heard of Sarah Winchester and her haunted house before watching this movie. Anyway, in my opinion, this tale definitely had some potential and I’m rather surprised that it was, back then, considered as one of the worst movies released in 2018. I mean, sure, the damned thing still didn’t really work but it was still far from being a total disaster. My point is that Sarah Winchester was a really interesting character and her house seemed to be fascinating so, only therefore, this movie got a few extra points from me. I also liked the fact that the man supposed to investigate her was pretty much a drug addict with a tendency for having some hallucinations. The main issue with this movie was that they chose a completely wrong approach though. Indeed, right from the very first scenes, it was pretty obvious that there were indeed some ghosts in this mansion and, as a result, they turned this movie into another generic and rather boring haunted house horror flick. It was also rather ridiculous that the conclusion of Dr. Price was that she was completely sane, after everything they had been through. In my opinion, it would have been so much more efficient and interesting to keep it ambiguous as long as possible or, even better, that, at the end of the movie, you would still not be sure what to believe about her and her house. Especially with Price having some hallucinations, it could have been a wild ride but, unfortunately, this potential was wasted with a really generic plot. Anyway, to conclude, even though I don’t think it was so bad after all, it was still rather weak though and I don’t think it is really worth a look.

A problem I have with a lot of horror movies is inconsistency of their idea, or explanations that don't really make sense with the rest of the story. Winchester, however, did a great job at remaining consistent with their story.

It relied on a number of jump scares, which were well done. The story was interesting and bizarre and was at least partially based on real people. Not terribly scary, but a good deal of suspenseful horror. 7/10