Helen’s on spooky form.... but the film’s a real horror show!

HORROR is one of the few genres that Helen Mirren, in her long and remarkably prolific career, has not really explored. Until now.

Here, in a film set in San Jose, California, in 1906 and ‘inspired by actual events’, she plays Sarah Winchester, the spooky widow of the man who built the Winchester rifle fortune.

The directors of the Winchester company hope to have her certified as mentally unfit to head the business, so she agrees for a Dr Price (Jason Clarke) to test her sanity.

But she has hand-picked him, for reasons that become clear. Sarah believes that her house is haunted by all the people that have been killed by Winchester rifles and, on the advice of a medium, keeps on extending it to accommodate them.

The building is still there, apparently. A silly concluding caption tells us so plemnly that it is the most haunted house in the, US, still Sarah Winchester’s story is intriguing. the more so for its factual foundation.

Unfortunately, directors and co writers peter and Michael Spierig, instead of weaving it into the creepy psychological thriller it could have been, go all guns blazing for full-on haunted house horror.

The entire complement of jump-scare clinchés. from sudden breezes extingushing candles to apparitions, pop up when they are least - make that most – expected. A waxy-faced Mirren is as good as ever, but the film is a misfire.

Winchester (15A) Verdict: A misfire