Winchester (dir. The Spierig Brothers)

Grief, death and guilt become the main antagonists in “The Spierig Brothers” haunted-house thriller “Winchester”: a outlandishly silly biopic which attempts to dissect the intricacies of the remorse of a person responsible for the deaths of those taken by her most prized commodity - the Winchester rifle. A pity then that this hyperbolic chiller is more interested in repeating outdated horror cliches than actually creating anything resembling a nuanced moment of horror, or indeed finding depth in the misery of it’s characters.

It's 1906 and it's been 25 years since the death of her husband and daughter, Winchester repeating arms owner Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) moves with her vast fortune into a labyrinthine mansion in San Jose California. But trouble is afoot; board members are starting to get worried with her eccentric behavior, not least of which her relationship with a local medium with whom she has decided to heed their advice and continuously build extensions to her large mansion. This leads to a meeting with renowned therapist Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) - a hedonist, laudanum taking physician in the midst of a contemptuous war with his own grief over the death of his wife. Offered exaggerate riches to monitor Mrs. Winchester’s sanity and report back, he finds himself in the hospitality of the aforementioned ambassador, and her niece Mrs. Marriott (Sarah Snook) and her troubled son Henry (Finn Scicluna-O’Prey) in their fragmented homestead.

Typically following the more broad horror plot devices which have transformed otherwise decent horror films into mediocrity, it transpires that Winchester is being targeted by the ghosts of victims whose lives were taken by her best-selling rifle. Herein warrants the supernatural elements of the drama where the film delves into the ridiculous and the more shamefully derivative. Clear comparisons can be made with Alejandro Amenabár's "The Others" or indeed the much superior J.A Bayona's "El Orfanato", though theres little originality here with which to build, and the Australian-set soundstage with which the film was filmed on was clearly where most of the modest $3.5 million dollar budget went toward instead of the freshness of narrative.

On a performance level, Helen Mirren is suitably solid and always watchable; however before long she succumbs to the tragically mundane and over-the-top nonsense you’ve seen a million times before. Her sartorial appearance also is preposterous; dressed from head to toe in funeral-black and adorned over her face is the ugliest of veils - looking as if she’s literally crawled up from the grave itself - it never wavers from the camp pantomime it always had the potential of being. Clarke is suited well too in his role as the gruff and rugged opium-abuser Price, here's clearly having fun there - though theres little to no depth in either of the characters - some of the best sequences involve their exchanges early on in the film which seem to suggest something with more resonance.

To make matters worse, it isn’t remotely scary; as has been the case with other well established film series like "Insidious: or "Sinister", the filmmakers believe that loud noises and creepy looking zombies in unison constitute true horror. “Winchester” is a undoubtedly very silly film; which of course can be benefit or hinder a directors vision. But here, there’s a undercurrent of disappointment about the thriller; given the on-screen talent and the team behind the underrated Jigsaw re-vamp, and indeed the potential at constructing something interesting around the gun-control epidemic, but all of this becomes secondary to the film’s main interest which are the shamefully foreseeable spooks- here’s a horror film that rapidly misfires when it had the potential to hit the target.

Rating 1/5