Winchester

****Spoilers follow. Read at your own risk.****

Winchester is based on the Winchester Mystery House that is located in San Jose, California. It is, up to this day, listed as one of the most haunted mansions in the USA. The movie follows a psychiatrist (played by Jason Clarke) as he tries to determine whether Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) is mentally stable enough to run the family business.

Now, I'm not sure how much of this story is based in facts (I suspect not a lot of it), but I did enjoy the movie. It was at times scary and at other times confusing, much like the Winchester mansion. The Winchester mansion underwent over 20 years of round the clock construction to make it what it is today: a building with over 40 rooms, hallways that end nowhere, staircases that make no sense.

The most confusing part to me was Sarah Winchester's explanation of why the mansion was constructed in that way. She said that the souls of those that were killed by a Winchester rifle came to her to have her construct the room that they passed in. She would then build the room to make them stronger so that she could help them move on. If the spirit is too strong and does not want to move on, she seals them into their rooms by nailing them closed with 13 nails.

In the movie, Sarah invites this new spirit into the house, which happens to want her dead. This spirit, near the end of the movie, releases all the other spirits from those rooms that have been sealed, and Sarah along with Dr. Eric Price must defeat this new spirit. The reason I find it confusing is because Sarah is able to simply tell the other spirits to go back to their rooms so she can seal the doors once again. Why would a spirit willingly be sealed into a room? Maybe I misunderstood the meaning of the rooms and Sarah's explanation, but I find that to be very strange.

Winchester did succeed in creeping me out and making me jump. Even when I thought I saw it coming, I still jumped, and that to me is a scary movie done right. Just be aware that you will need to use some thinking skills to understand what is happening in the Winchester Mansion.

I, for one, have no intention of ever visiting one of the most haunted mansions in the USA in real life...I think I'll survive without it.