WINCHESTER

Name: WINCHESTER
Item: WINCHESTER
Author: Steph Manthe

"Politically Correct Occultism"

Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

WINCHESTER is a horror movie based on a real-life person, the widow of the man who invented the Winchester repeating rifle in 1866. The movie stars Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester. Sarah feels compelled to build a mansion that never seems to end, constantly adding rooms across seven stories. She claims to be driven to the designs by the unsettled spirits of shooting victims from her husband’s guns. Her family, worried about her sanity, hire a skeptical, drug-addled psychiatrist to evaluate her.

WINCHESTER is reliant on moody atmospherics rather than true scares, a reflection of its PG-13 rating. However, the movie simply doesn’t deliver enough thrills. Too many of the attempts at fright come from false jump-scares and loud bursts of music. The movie is far more offensive for its highly occult, misguided view of the afterlife, with no real mention of the truth of Heaven, Hell or God’s plan for salvation. The protagonists fight the most malevolent spirit in the house, but the other spirits are allowed to remain. WINCHESTER also has a silly, politically correct anti-gun message.

Content:

(OOO, FRFRFR, PCPCPC, L, VV, S, N, A, DD, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Very strong occult worldview with a false view of the afterlife based on the true story of Sarah Winchester, the widow of the man who invented the Winchester repeating rifle and the eccentric and supposedly haunted mansion she built over the course of decades, with a very strong politically correct view against guns where all the spirits are of people who were killed by Winchester rifles, so that there is a heavily anti-gun message throughout the movie, where guns bring nothing but misery to people and main female character feels guilty about all the death caused by her husband’s rifles and guns;

Foul Language:

One “d” obscenity, three profanities using Jesus and four light profanities;

Violence:

Mostly non-graphic, but scattered throughout the film are numerous scenes of a house being destroyed by unseen spirits and demons, with people thrown around rooms and hallways or crushed by falling ceilings, a possessed child tries to shoot his grandmother several times and misses while possessed but then bashes her in the head with the rifle butt though no serious injuries result, a flashback shows a woman trying to shoot herself and then accidentally shooting her husband instead, another flashback shows the before and after of a soldier who committed suicide by shooting himself with a rifle, a man shoots another possessed man in order to kill the most evil spirit in a haunted house;

Sex:

A doctor is shown talking with three prostitutes, but it’s obvious that despite being now clothed, they just had sexual relations;

Nudity:

Doctor is seen shirtless and in underwear after engaging in sexual relations; Alcohol: Casual drinking in a couple scenes;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking but doctor is an addict of a poison that causes hallucinations, and it’s shown that he’s enjoying hallucinations at first, but in agony later as he’s forced to stop taking them; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Many occult symbols and the number 13 is seen as both a good and bad luck number, with spirits trapped in rooms dead-bolted with 13 nails.

More Detail:

WINCHESTER is a horror movie based on the life of Sarah Winchester, the real-life widow of the man who invented the Winchester repeating rifle in 1866 and the eccentric and supposedly haunted mansion she built over the course of decades. Full of phony jump scares, WINCHESTER has a strong occult, politically correct worldview with a false view of the afterlife and a silly, politically correct anti-gun message.

The movie stars Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, widow of the man who invented the Winchester repeating rifle. She feels compelled to build a mansion that never seems to end, constantly adding rooms across seven stories, claiming to be driven to the designs by the unsettled spirits of shooting victims from her husband’s guns.

Her family is concerned she’s blowing the fortune and is insane. So, they enlist drug-addled psychiatrist Eric Price (Jason Clarke) to evaluate her and see if she’s fit to remain in charge of the estate. Price says he doesn’t believe in the afterlife. In fact, he claims he saw and felt nothing when he died for three minutes after being shot and revived years before. However, soon he’s noticing what appear to be demons and hearing and feeling the presence of spirits everywhere.

Thus, a showdown and then a team-up begins, as Price slowly comes to believe that Sarah isn’t crazy but rather truly haunted. He teams up with Sarah to rid the house of the most evil spirit of all, a disgruntled Civil War soldier who had committed suicide with a rifle.

WINCHESTER is mostly reliant on moody atmospherics rather than true scares, a reflection of its PG-13 rating. However, the movie simply doesn’t deliver enough thrills or scares to satisfy horror fans. Too many of the attempts at fright come from false jump-scares and loud bursts of music that go with them.

The movie is far more offensive for its highly occult, misguided view of the afterlife, with no real mention of the truth of Heaven, Hell or God’s plan for salvation. It posits a mumbo-jumbo pastiche of half-baked New Age and occult ideas about how the afterlife works. Finally, while the main evil spirit is defeated, in the end most of the spirits are shown happy to stay and remain haunting the Winchester house forever. Thus, evil, or at least false theology, wins out, and WINCHESTER becomes a silly abhorrent mess.

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What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.