A Look At Winchester, The House That Ghosts Built!

Good day my friends! Well we are into the shortest I know where I live can be one of the coldest months of the year. Yes we are in February! And with a limited amount of days in the month we are still managing to get some movies. Typically the month of February is not known for bringing some overly strong movies. In this month is where the studios generally give us some okay movies but not the ones that you would seen nominated for an Oscar or strong enough to compete in the knock down drag out battle for summer box office superiority. But from time to time, the studios manage to surprise us and give us a great movie. You see February has become known as the dumping ground for movies like that! And the reason for that is that not too many people are going to the theatre because of the weather and they are still trying to recover from Christmas. But a new trend has developed over the past few years and that is where you'll get a studio throw in a blockbuster or two to make those big box office dollars to bring people in the theatres. And over the next couple of weeks we will see quite possibly some stronger box office numbers with Valentines Day movie goers seeing Fifty Shades Freed catering to fans of the popular books. And Disney/Marvel giving us the latest installment in their Marvel cinematic universe in preparation for May's big release of Avengers: Infinity War with Black Panther. Both of those movies look to dethrone Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle. But we are not here to look at those movies tonight we are looking at the Biographical/Fantasy/ Horror movie Winchester. This move stars academy award winner Helen Mirren ( The Queen) as Sarah Winchester and Jason Clarke(Zero Dark Thirty) as Dr. Eric Price. So let us sit back and find out just what this movie is all about!

Inspired by true events this movie takes us back in time to the early 1900's just before the great San Francisco earthquake one of the most destructive earthquakes of all time. Fifty miles outside of San Francisco in San Jose sits the Winchester mansion. Originally bought as a smaller house by heiress to the fortune and majority share holder in the Winchester Repeating Firearms Company after her husband and founder of the company died lives Sarah Winchester(Mirren). From day one she has had the house in constant construction 24hrs a day, seven days a week for decades. The house turned into a monstrous seven story building containing hundreds of rooms. Uniquely designed it became known as the house that ghosts built. The reason for this is after her only child died at a young age Sarah became obsessed with the occult believing

her family to be cursed for the profit made by the lives taken by the Winchester firearm. The only family she has around is her niece Marion Marriot and her young son Henry who live with her. The constant building, demolishing and rebuilding of the house has left those on the board of her husbands company to question her sanity. So the company under the request of Sarah herself hire Dr. Eric Price(Clarke) to assess her mental capacity with their hopes that she will be deemed unfit and lose her majority voting shares. A man with a tragic past himself having been shot and died for 3 min by his mentally unstable wife who took her own life after accidentally shooting Eric. You see it was no coincidence that Sarah requested Eric test her, as the weapon that shot and killed him for 3min was a Winchester rifle and she believes he has a connection to the other side. What he finds when he stays at the Winchester House is a very independent woman who he believes to be just building this house out of grief. What he learns is that every night at midnight a bell is rung. It is at that time that the spirits speak the strongest and tells Sarah what room to build for them. Upon witnessing this Dr. Price thinks she is mad even though having witnessed some encounters with a few ghosts. What she tells him is that she builds these rooms to help the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifle to find some sort of peace and move on. Some spirits do move on and others don't and can be quite violent which she has locked in the rooms she constructed for them with a board and 13 nails. But the latest spirit to arrive is quite stronger than the others and is more terrifying wanting to settle a score with the Winchesters even targeting Sarah's nephew using him as a vessel at times. It is Sarah's hope that Dr. Price with his past tragic experience will believe her and can help put this spirit to rest before he succeeds in his plans of vengeance on the Winchester family.

Well what do you think? Yeah it sounds kind of interesting by the way I described it! LOL! Now I have read a few viewer reviews on this movie and also have seen it did not get a strong rating on IMDB. But here is what I thought from what I saw. This movie while not totally 100 percent accurate historically. But like it says at the beginning of the movie it was inspired by actual events which in Hollywood terms means that the movie is fictional with some historical truths in there. After seeing this movie I found it to be a pretty decent little picture, I mean after all it is basically a horror movie in some aspect. There were some thrills and chills that made you jump out of your seat. While the story seemed a little rushed it did move along quite nice keeping you interested. This movie was not about gore and multiple people being killed by spirits. It was more of a traditional ghost story based on an American legend. If you were looking for a movie with a high body count than this is not the movie for you! It also had a nice sub-plot about gun violence thrown in. While the dialogue was okay and could have been stronger the movie seemed to carry itself just fine and establish the main characters well. Some fair performances put in by Helen Mirren and Jason Clarke, in no way Oscar calibre but okay for the genre of movie they were in. All in all an okay movie, I enjoyed it and in no way felt the need to stare at my watch waiting for it to be over. That is why I am giving it a 6.6 on The Justin Scale Of Movies and giving it a soft Pick-It rating of movies to see at the theatre. So I guess that's a wrap here for my latest movie review my friends! Until next time keep that popcorn freshly popped and save me a good seat because I will be seeing you next time at the movies!!