(The only break came in the wake of the massive 1906 earthquake, and while the house was affected, the damage was not catastrophic.) Before you head to the theater to see Helen Mirren in head-to-toe black lace, consider the history of the actual house that Winchester built. Winchester purchased it as an eight-room, two-story farmhouse in 1886, but once construction began, it carried on continuously for 24 hours a day, 365 days each year, for the next 38 years. (Well, except for the plot about the vengeful Civil War ghost.) Though it’s known today as the Winchester Mystery House, it was called Llanada Villa when Sarah Winchester lived in it, and it’s located in San Jose, California. But the most fascinating part about the film is that Mirren’s gigantic house is actually a real place that’s still standing today - and the history presented in the movie is pretty accurate, too. Winchester is a horror movie in the classic tradition, a spooky, almost quaint ghost story distinguished by its extravagant set pieces. The doctor expects an open-and-shut case with an easy payday, but instead, finds a lucid woman deliberately spending her fortune on one of the most opulent homes ever constructed in America by the turn of the 20th century (complete with hundreds of rooms inhabited by spirits). The film kicks off with the arrival of a crooked, drug-addicted psychiatrist (Jason Clarke) at said mansion, who was sent on behalf of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company - which the widow has held a 50 percent controlling interest in since her husband’s death - to declare her unfit, so the board can take her shares and elbow her out. Winchester, opening this weekend, stars Helen Mirren as a mysterious widow living in a giant, ever-expanding mansion, commissioning nearly four decades of construction on her house in hopes of filling each new room with a restless ghost.
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