Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Director: Michael and Peter Spierig
Quick Impressions:
We considered seeing one of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film this Thursday night, but my husband suggested, “Maybe we should start watching this year’s movies.”
“I agree,” I chimed in enthusiastically. “I think we should see Helen Mirren in the haunted house.”
That’s the way I’ve always referred to this movie since I learned of its existence two weeks ago. If you were to listen to me talking about it, you would assume that the name of the film actually was Helen Mirren in the Haunted House (or possibly Helen Mirren in…The Haunted House).
Now my husband and I have been to a movie or two before. We have a good idea of what to expect from a horror movie that opens the first week of February without screening for the press. We didn’t go into Winchester expecting to find the first Best Picture nominee of 2018.
But come on, who wouldn’t want to see Helen Mirren in a haunted house? That’s a very compelling premise. There will be Helen Mirren. There will be a haunted house. I keep thinking of the man in the chair from The Drowsy Chaperone, “What more do you need for an evening’s entertainment?”
And actually, I’m pleased to report that Winchester actually does deliver everything it promises. When I first watched the trailer, I was somewhat concerned that Helen Mirren was only going to show up in the beginning to get us hooked, and then mere minutes into the film she was going to get sucked away by ghosts leaving us to follow the misadventures of a bunch of nobodies now trapped in her haunted house.
But to my pleasant surprise, I had gotten the wrong idea from the trailer, and Helen Mirren actually is the star of this movie along with fellow non-nobody Jason Clarke.
Is Winchester a good movie? Well, it’s not as disturbing as Clarke’s other recent film about horror in America (Mudbound), but for a February spookfest with a few decent jump scares, it’s actually better than you might think.
The Good:
My biggest question coming out of the theater was, “How on earth am I just finding out about Sarah Winchester? The heir of the Winchester rifle fortune really did become obsessed with spirits and build a huge mansion to house them all, and she kept her house under construction continuously for decades, just building and tearing down new ghost rooms over and over again, and I’m only just learning about this now?”
Seriously, every American school child should grow up knowing this story. Recently there’s been a big push to tell more women’s stories when we teach children history. Why aren’t we telling this woman’s story? I’m actually dying to visit the mansion now, and I’m strongly considering doing some research about the real Sarah Winchester with my daughter because that sounds like a fun summer project.
Of course the film makes a very heavy-handed statement against gun violence, not so subtly implying that our entire nation is now suffering under the Winchester curse because no one should profit from instruments of death.
But Winchester is more than just a clumsy PSA against gun violence.
It’s also a terrific metaphor for mental illness. I’m not sure if that’s what it’s going for, to be honest, but it’s there in the movie, nevertheless.
I loved what Clarke’s character Dr. Price says to Sarah Winchester when he’s trying to tell her gently that she’s probably just crazy. (As in, “Don’t worry. There are no ghosts. You’re probably just crazy.”)
He keeps pointing out to her that she felt out of control, so she has created a house and an entire reality in which she is completely in control. This is early in the film when he believes that she has become delusional in response to grief. (Of course, she could easily say to him that his denial is nothing more than a delusion that makes him feel in control, and she kind of does hint at that, too.)
But the idea of this crazy, perpetually-under-construction, ever-changing house as a metaphor for the damaged mind, for the altered reality a mentally ill person is forcing himself to live in–that’s sort of brilliant. It taps into the kind of OCD traits that often arise in response to anxiety, the denial that comes with grief.
What happens in the movie nicely mimics the experience of someone slipping into psychosis. You can’t leave the house because you are only safe in the house. In the house, there is an elaborately structured set of rules. But then the house changes. Then the house becomes the place where you are in unspeakable danger. But you still can’t leave. And just at the tipping point, at the moment when you say to yourself, “Maybe this is crazy. Maybe I should believe what people are telling me. Maybe I really should leave,” then suddenly, the house becomes destabilized. The ground starts to shake, and all hell breaks lose, and it becomes impossible to leave. And the house always changes. At every moment it changes. Maybe you don’t realize it at the time, but from moment to moment, it’s not the same house.
It’s really a brilliant dramatization of how mental illness works (though I honestly can’t tell if this is done intentionally). In that way, the movie kept reminding me of Gothika. That film had those flickering lights. This one has the constant hammering.
(Speaking of Gothika, I would love to see a movie about Penélope Cruz and Helen Mirren in a haunted house. Halle Berry could co-star. I think it writes itself.)
Mirren’s performance is fantastic, by the way. Ultimately, I had a few problems with the film itself, but there’s nothing to knock about her performance. She’s great. She plays the role completely straight and at many times conveys a palpable terror that I found extremely compelling.
As I remarked to my mother when I got home, Helen Mirren could easily play Sarah Winchester on the stage Our Town style (without all the special effects and with minimal props and costumes), and the story would still be just as good, maybe even better. In fact, I’d love to see Winchester done that way.
The way it is done is still pretty good. It has a couple of fantastic jump scares (which is not too bad since, as my husband pointed out, after the first two or three, jump scares are really hard to pull off because building the tension necessary to make them good tips off the audience that another one is coming). The film has rich atmosphere, decent action, and nice performances by Sarah Snook and especially Jason Clarke.
Best Scene Visually:
Helen Mirren gets a more elaborate, ceremonious, stately introduction as Sarah Winchester than she did as The Queen.
As I watched the first appearance of her face, a thrill raced through me. “My God!” I thought. “It’s like they’re unveiling the Mona Lisa!” When that veil is lifted, it’s almost like a religious experience. While I’m sure the directors calculated such an effect, I’m not sure how they achieved it. Mirren seems to be doing all the work herself, emanating a wondrous energy somehow. All she’s really doing is having a face, but it never works out that well when I do it. Not only is Mirren beautiful, she is also in possession of this immense, palpable presence.
Once as a college student, I toured a small museum in Italy that housed a large collection of medieval paintings and one Raphael. The Raphael needed no label. It jumped out at you, leaped off the wall to your eye as if the instant you saw it, you heard choirs of angels singing.
That’s the exact sort of feeling the first appearance of Helen Mirren’s face elicits in this movie.
To be fair, the Raphael’s exceptional power to catch the eye may have been helped along by good lighting, and I’m sure Mirren is well lit, too. But she’s definitely doing more than half the work herself by appearing. It’s so easy to forget that “to appear” is an action. I don’t know how she’s doing it, but the results are absolutely stunning. Even now, Mirren is gorgeous beyond belief, and Sarah Winchester is the dominant presence at that dinner table for sure.
On the drive home, my husband commented enthusiastically on this same scene before I could even mention it. He focused not just on her unveiling, but on her commanding and carefully crafted presence in the moments leading up to it as well.
I’ve heard Mark Hamill say several times now that he thinks Luke Skywalker gets perhaps the best entrance ever (with the most dramatic build up) at the end of The Force Awakens.
Maybe that’s true, but I think Helen Mirren gives him a run for his money in her grand, ethereal entrance as Sarah Winchester.
This moment itself is so captivating that it outshines the rest of the film. We quickly see that whether or not the ghosts are real, there certainly is a strong presence, an apparition, haunting the Winchester mansion.
Best Action Sequence:
I absolutely love the part where the guy gets sucked away backwards. I don’t want to spoil the moment, so I won’t reveal which guy, or where he goes while he’s getting sucked away backwards.
I also liked the part with the gun. Maybe that’s too vague. I liked the part with the little boy and the gun. Is that specific enough? (I don’t want to give anything away.)
Best Scene:
When Helen Mirren pleads with her niece not to remove the child from the house, I could really feel her anguish. A few moments later, she makes and unusual, energized entrance into the child’s room which I absolutely loved.
The Negatives:
The first jump scare practically made me leap into my husband’s lap. I mean the one that involves the moving mirror and the empty chair.
Up till then, I had not known for sure anything truly scary like that would happen. The movie’s detail-rich setting is part old black-and-white monster movie, part Victorian sitting room, and part the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. So I got lulled into a false sense of its sensibility and thought, “Maybe we’ll see an ominous shadow on that chair.” Yeah, instead you get a mega-close-up of the Crypt Keeper jumping up your nose.
It scared me so much that I actually felt my intestines knot up, and I realized, “Oh no! This is going to be a real horror movie like cool people watch!” (I can do spooky atmosphere and psychological horror, but I usually can’t handle Sawish-Eli-Roth-evil-devil-torture-Rob-Zombie stuff.)
So I was really, really, really scared, and I spent the next forty minutes clamping down on my husband’s arm so tightly that he’ll probably have bruises tomorrow, and then…
Nothing scary happened ever again. So I must confess that I was a little disappointed by that. For long stretches, I did not feel scared or even concerned.
At one point I thought, “Phantom Thread was scarier than this, and that’s a movie about how one should properly prepare produce.”
But…my husband did point out (justly) that I was probably used to being scared then, so subsequent scares did not bother me as much.
He and I shared one common point of dissatisfaction, though. Why that one ghost? What was so special about that particular ghost? One big reveal I saw coming way in advance (although the shock moment was the second jump scare that did actually make me jump). Another plot twist I also anticipated, but to be fair, I think you’re supposed to.
There were aspects of Jason Clarke’s storyline that didn’t quite work for me. In theory, his journey as a character was good, but I just found in execution, it didn’t have the power I would have liked. I still can’t put my finger on why exactly. Maybe it had to do with the way information about him was slowly revealed. At one point, I started to think, “This is kind of like a watered down version of Shutter Island. This story makes sense, but shouldn’t I care more?”
I also found the big solution in the end ludicrous to the point of being outright laughable. I get the idea, but I still think it didn’t quite make sense, and it seemed to undermine the film’s political (if you want to call it that) message. If you must know, it just made me think of The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which did bring a smile to my face, but I don’t think it’s intended to be funny.
If I had made this movie, I would have included either more ghosts (lots more) or no ghosts at all. I personally think it would be a stronger film if we had no positive proof that the ghosts were even real. I mean, delusional old woman, tortured laudnam addict, disturbed child, grieving mother…Do we even know what’s true? I wish we did not get to see, then had to choose for ourselves whether or not to believe.
But I didn’t make this movie. In fact, I’ve never made any movies. So my preferences are pretty much moot.
Overall:
Winchester is a spooky good time with a lot to say about gun control and mental illness and a really compelling central performance by Helen Mirren. It was a pleasant way to spend date night and (definitely) a change of pace from all the Oscar films.