Whenever a movie opens in wide release without screening in advance for critics, those of us with a professional duty to seek it out immediately brace ourselves — not without some eagerness — for an experience of epic, unprecedented awfulness.
Once in awhile our expectations are satisfied — I still (vaguely) remember you, “Aeon Flux”! — but most of the time we find ourselves let down, longing for memorable turkeys and instead getting stuck with bland mediocrities like “Winchester.”
Directed by brothers Michael and Peter Spierig (“Daybreakers,” “Jigsaw”), who wrote the script with Tom Vaughan, this dour and derivative ghost story exploits the mysterious legacy of Sarah Winchester, the reclusive heiress who spent much of the early 1900s — and much of the fortune she inherited from her firearm-magnate husband — building an enormous seven-story estate in San Jose. The design for each room was inspired, or so she believed, by the whispers of those tortured souls who had the misfortune to perish at the end of a Winchester rifle, and who had returned from the grave to either heap punishment on the family or offer them redemption.
Depending on your perspective, then, you might describe “Winchester” as an unusually dull supernatural thriller or an unusually protracted gun-control PSA. In either case, I doubt that any staunch Second Amendment advocates would find it especially troubling. In the wake of yet another wave of mass-shooting headlines, a few creaky floorboards and howling apparitions are unlikely to disturb anyone’s conscience.