Wednesday 21 March 2018

Whincester

This has a great premise, the house with multiple rooms and stairways going nowhere. So what's the chance of this doing something interesting with it?

The widow Winchester is making a house, and she owns majority of the company. The company aren't too happy with that, so hire a doctor to assess her. Wouldn't you know, but the doctor has a past that ends up tying in with why she is interested in him. And there's an explanation for what's going on: ghosts. Namely, make a room of where the ghost died (unfortunate if they were outside) and then talk to them to allow them to rest... if they will. Go on, guess what happens.

And that's the thing. Once you get the set up unique to these real events, then it becomes a standard haunted house story. This feels like a mediocre low budget effort, but I'm not sure that a high budget wouldn't a) have stretched it out worse, and b) make the story stupidly complicated and overblown. So, yay, on the lesser budget. But I still feel like the story could have been better.

Yeah, I like Helen Mirran, and here she's doing more than the script should be worth, although she's not exactly pulling out an A-game here. Jason Clarke is our 'hero' and is a lot more believable that most ghost interacters, until he has to believe of course. And there are a range of other character actors that are familiar, and working well, but again nothing really stands out here.

Should have been better, but it doesn't outstay its welcome.

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