Winchester (2018)
Directed by Michael Spierig
San Jose, California, 1906. Isolated in her labyrinthine mansion, eccentric firearm heiress Sarah Winchester believes that she is being haunted by the souls of those killed by the guns manufactured by her company.
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What critics compared Winchester to
Peter and Michael Spierig, best known as the Spierig brothers, are talented filmmakers, just a couple years removed from their excellent, twisty sci-fi feature Predestination.
Directed by Michael and Peter Spierig and starring Helen Mirren, Winchester is the latest gothic horror offering from the people who brought you, amongst other things, the hugely underrated 2009 film Predestination, an adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s cult sci-fi novel All You Zombies.
Directed by the Spierig brothers, who helmed the cerebral Predestination and the less cerebral Jigsaw, set up a movie that hearkens back to psychological horror films of the ’60s and ’70s, with Clarke’s skeptical, laudanum-addicted doctor conjuring up comparisons to the Hammer horror films of the era.
Winchester was directed (and co-written) by Australian filmmakers Peter and Michel Spierig, who showed a flair for world-building with their 2009 breakout, Daybreakers, and exhibited a strong sense of narrative tension and intelligent conceptualization with their little-seen and very underrated 2014 sci-fi indie Predestination.
There’s a brief moment in Winchester (directed by the Spierig Brothers, who at this point are a boulder rolling down a hill in terms of the quality of their films going from the twisty science fiction mind trip Predestination, to the commercially and critically unsuccessful reboot of deadly Saw games with Jigsaw, and now this blunder of a supernatural thriller) where the drug addicted Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) places his head sideways up against an antiquated device composed of holes in the wall intended to take sound and travel it through to designated rooms of the infamous labyrinthine haunted house.
The joint directors and co-writers are Australian twin brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, who scored critical acclaim with their 2014 sci-fi thriller Predestination, then rebooted the Saw slasher franchise last year with the poorly reviewed but commercially successful Jigsaw.
These are two very fine actors: Mirren needs no introduction, of course, while Clarke has been a standout in 2013’s “The Great Gatsby” and the adventure-drama “Everest.”