REVIEW/SUPERNATURAL HORROR

WINCHESTER (PG13)

100 minutes/Opens today/ 2 stars

The story: In a story set in the early 20th century and loosely inspired by real events, Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) is a widow with a fortune inherited from her late husband William, owner of the Winchester armaments company. Her mansion in San Jose, California, is an ever-growing and bizarre collection of corridors that go nowhere and rooms that serve no purpose. A physician, Dr Eric Prince (Jason Clarke) is asked by members of the Winchester board of directors to visit her home to assess her mental health. There, he discovers, to his horror, the reason for the endless building works.

Sarah Winchester did exist and she was the widow of the famed armaments manufacturer who gave his name to the rifle that could fire many bullets without reloading. She did build a sprawling house filled with architectural oddities in San Jose, one that has become a tourist spot, spawning dozens of urban legends.

A selection of these myths have found their way into this movie, a work inspired by a much-visited attraction, a method of film genesis that seems to have worked for the Pirates Of The Caribbean series (2003 to 2017).

And like the Pirates franchise, this one relies heavily on set design and special effects, though on a much smaller scale. The Winchester house is the antagonist here. Its tight, twisty corridors and multitude of doors, each hiding a dark secret, give the movie's writers and directors, the Spierig brothers, the claustrophobic setting they need, one they bolster with critters that pop from the shadows.

That blend of live action, props-based horror resembles the approach the brothers took in their last movie, Jigsaw (2017), the so-so update of the escape-room thriller.

Inexplicably, in this unpoetic rendering of a Gothic horror piece, they have the A-list talent of Oscar winner Mirren on their side. She is aided by Clarke, an actor at home in a genre film such as this or in serious dramas. Neither of them seems to be slacking or phoning it in, to their credit.

It must be said, however, that Mirren's Sarah Winchester requires the actress to mostly float about dressed in black.

She is a thin representation of a Victorian widow as much as Clarke's Dr Prince is the archetype of the man of science who learns to his dismay - don't they all? - that there is more to this place than meets the eye.