38
Whichever way you wield it, Winchester is a misfire.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
20
For all their technical competence, the Spierig brothers don’t show great understanding of how ghost stories actually work.
20
Winchester is the supernatural-schlock version of a liberal think-tank paper.
20
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
A staggeringly pointless supernatural non-chiller featuring some very tiresome jump scares.
38
The first major movie disappointment of 2018.
75
RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams
What Winchester lacks in originality its creators amply make up for in execution.
30
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Dalton
Mirren always brings a touch of class, of course, even to deluxe schlock like this. But Clarke is something of a blank leading man while the secondary characters are mostly pale phantoms sleepwalking through a thinly drawn plot.
20
The film has about five sets and they never feel like they connect together, but this is less an attempt at disorienting the viewer than simply cutting corners; the grisly, overdone lighting, meanwhile, makes you want to hide behind your fingers for all the wrong reasons.
49
You won't lose yourself in this haunted house, even though that was supposed to be the whole point. A film about a labyrinth filled with ghosts quickly becomes methodical and familiar, stranding a great cast in an inert supernatural thriller.