The stereotyping of Black and Indigenous men are made worse by the fact they never speak, nor do they have any backstories.

| Original Score: D | Nov 18, 2021

Directors Michael and Peter Spierig, reworking a script by Tom Vaughan, bring little passion or eloquence to the dialogue, frustrating such capable actors as Helen Mirren (playing Winchester) and Jason Clarke.

| Mar 9, 2020

It's not good. And it's not good in a way that's made worse by the fact that there's so much potential in this story.

| Aug 28, 2018

Agreeable enough, but lightweight.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 23, 2018

What is Helen Mirren doing in what is essentially a B-movie? I can't say but she brings great dignity to lines that are, at times, literally unspeakable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 23, 2018

This speaks to Winchester's overall failure of imagination-it's the sort of forgettable movie that could have been a memorable one.

| Feb 8, 2018

But the most disconcerting thing about Winchester is how grindingly tedious it is.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Feb 8, 2018

This animated theme-park ride won't scare genre veterans. But it'll do as a Pot Noodle snack until such horror entrées as Hereditary, Cold Hell, and Mom and Dad arrive.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 5, 2018

It shouldn't happen to anyone, much less a Dame - not a movie of such barreling awfulness that it strands the great Helen Mirren in a gothic house of cards that collapses on actors and audiences alike.

| Original Score: 0.5/4 | Feb 5, 2018

In "Winchester," the Spierigs have made a blunt and pissy American political film about the national curse of firearms and the unslaked, violent, destructive anger of the defeated Confederacy.

| Feb 5, 2018

You watch "Winchester" thinking about the movie that might have been, and wishing that those ghosts would transport Mirren into that movie, immediately.

| Feb 4, 2018

A conventional haunted house film that insists on schlocky thrills and trite genre cliches.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 4, 2018

Winchester is let down by the mythos that surrounds the creation of the mansion itself, saddled with living up to a haunting history that might have only existed in Sarah Winchester's head.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 3, 2018

Let the guilt and dread and spooky atmospherics and oh, yes, ensuing madness commence! Wait, no? Jump scares? Oh well.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 3, 2018

The Winchester Mystery House deserves a little better than "Winchester."

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 2, 2018

Even the scares, too infrequent for this type of film, have a consistent misdirection that becomes tired and predictable. The ending tries to be thoughtful, but there's not enough investment in these characters to care.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 2, 2018

All that speculative fun has been shaped into a rather clunky, derivative bit of supernatural claptrap: a haunted house movie curiously low on mystery or honest scares.

| Original Score: C | Feb 2, 2018

Ho-hum apparitions appear and disappear without a trace. Ms. Mirren and her representatives are probably hoping the movie will do likewise.

| Feb 2, 2018

Having laid out an unusually intricate and politically charged puzzle, "Winchester" proceeds to solve it in the clunkiest, most perfunctory way imaginable.

| Feb 2, 2018

It's just awful.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 2, 2018