By Jason Solomons
Finally, after 129 movie roles, Dame Helen Mirren does horror. The gothic ghost story, Winchester, sees the Oscar-winning actress switch from HM the Queen to ‘scream queen as Sarah Winchester, a true-life character who was heiress to the titular gun company's vast fortune. Winchester invented the repeating rifle, the weapon that eventually ‘won the West’ with its ability to mow down enemies without reloading. But widow Sarah is consumed by guilt over the legacy of her late husband’s company and now – it’s 1906 – spends her days locked in an ever-expanding mansion, adding room after room before tearing them down and extending again.
The mansion itself exists today and is billed as America’s Most Haunted House (Winchester Mystery House) – a macabre tourist attraction in San Jose (if you know the way, of course). Although Ms Winchester’s demands are clearly keeping the local builders happy, the board of directors at Winchester think she’s gone a bit barmy and are keen to wrest control of the company from her. To which end, they’ve hired a psychiatrist, Dr Eric Price (played by the lumpen Australian actor, Jason Clarke), to enter the property and assess her mental state.
Dr Price has a recreational addiction to laudanum, which doesn’t exactly help when he starts seeing spooky things in every mirror and behind every doorway, yes, even the one to the cellar – no cliché left undead here. He tries to take control of the situation but Helen’s Ms Winchester will have none of his nonsense. She lifts back her black lace veil to reveal a grim face, a face that says: look sunshine, I don’t know how I got into this dud but let’s just get on with it, shall we?
The scariest thing here is Dame Helen’s scowl whenever she has to deliver the dialogue, words which she swills around her mouth like she's drinking vinegar. Unlike many scream queens before her, Helen is not afraid of the ghosts; she's trying to boss them around. Her character is 'guided' by the many spirits gunned down by Winchester rifles who, she claims, come to heal in her mansion. She’s offering them a home, building them a room, as a kind of penance.
All this is fairly intriguing, a horror movie about gun control, a film steeped in mourning for the deaths of millions. Yet it’s also one that fetishes these weapons and builds to a climax of levitating rifles and ghostly trigger fingers. We’re even treated to an assembly of ghostly Winchester victims, including a slave in chains, some whiskery Western types and an American Indian (with feathers and tomahawk), a gathering that looks more like Halloween at the Am Dram Society.
Dame Helen brings the film gravitas when it’s the last thing it needed. So ludicrous and badly explained is the plot, so random and unmapped is this sprawling house, that what it really needs
is a bit of high camp, some histrionics, a dose of surprise instead of the usual jump scares and wobbly music. Whichever way you point it, this Winchester fires blanks and is hopefully the last shot at horror for Helen Mirren.
