Haunting of Winchester House (2009)

Simply A Masterpiece

Redundant and unnecessary.

A Disappointing Continuation

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

OK, now, let's get started. Plot: The story itself is actually good, which is unbelievable for this movie. Plot is telling us that the weird things are happening in the house, and the environment is disturbing as well. But the rest of the movie... oh my god.Cast: Actors are really... um, awful. They don't know how to act. They don't know A N Y T H I N G. No expressions, idiotic dialogs, I think that the 'actors' got 2 dollars in the end, since the movie is so god damn awful. Why is it released anyway? I would die full of shame. Effects are scary, but overused. So overused that they become hilarious in the end. (Black guy chasing ghosts with a thing which looks like a condom; GHOST can't find the woman because she's hiding behind him while hugging another ghost; they are walking with a CANDLE around the house; at one time outside is SUNNY, and in the second scene... darkness. I mean, seriously?; The guy is DYING and in the next second he's like running without A N Y trace of B L O O D which was boiling out of him 2 seconds ago; black guy using soap to make a circle etc.) So, if you want to watch something and die of laughter, watch this.

The Asylum have made a lot of real clunkers, and Haunting of Winchester House adds to that long list. I don't think it is quite down there as one of the absolute worst, but that does not stop it from being a movie with almost no redeeming features. The worst asset is I agree the acting, the worst being from Lira Kellerman and Patty Roberts who act in a very forced and artificial way throughout. Kimberly Ables Jindra is the least bad, she has moments where she is touchingly sincere but it is nothing special or memorable and she like everybody else fails to rise above her material. That's hardly a surprise though, because the dialogue is so inane and awkward that you want to vomit even thinking about it, and the characters are basically cookie-cutter cardboard cut-outs with no personality or development. The story also doesn't work, the telling of it is far too fragmented, random and predictable and it would have been scarier if the pacing hadn't felt like I was riding on the back of a snail, and that the scares didn't feel like a mish-mash of pre-existing horror/haunted house movies with none of the suspense, tension or thrills. Even though it is a haunted house movie, the origin of how it came to be so here was just not there, so everything just felt really underdeveloped, seeing as the movie is nearly an hour and a half there is no excuse for that. It looks very amateurish, the special effects look fake and are utilised far too obviously, the lighting gives the movie a very murky look and the camera shots are so fast and full of face shots and close-ups that it makes the action incoherent. And the music and sound effects are really overdone and just overbear everything. All in all, really as awful as I'd heard and a movie I wish to forget in the long run. 1/10 Bethany Cox

I love watching true story haunting movies and after reading a write up on this movie and reading the history of the house, I was eager to watch it but I was very disappointed, In my opinion it is a total waste of time and money, not only for me but the actual movie itself.The acting was so lame a group of normal people could have done better. And after watching the whole movie I cannot for the life of me figure out where they got the story from considering it is supposed to be a true story.If anyone can figure out how they got the story I would be interested to hear from them.I would also go as far to say that is the worst movie I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of movies in my time as I am no spring chicken.

The actors - especially the mother - seemed quite sincere in their roles, but the story itself didn't really make any sense. It all seemed so random - just random ghosts at random times coming after random people in random ways and doing random things with them, all for no apparent reason. The characters were pretty much text-book cookie-cutter. There were entirely too many full-on face shots where the heads of the characters filled up the entire screen, back & forth between them. I never realized how annoying that could be, but I've never seen that kind of shot so over-used before. There is no discernible story, just a bunch of disjointed, discombobulated "fragments". Not very well plotted. If you don't care too much about story but just like seeing people scream & ghosts go, "Boo!", this will do it for you. But if you're looking for an interesting or engaging story of some sort, this really doesn't cut it.