Winchester

Blending historical fact with large dollops of horror fiction, this luridly entertaining story of "the most haunted house in the world" stars Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, the widowed heiress to the repeating-rifle fortune. Believing herself to be haunted by the ghosts of the gun's many victims, guilt-racked Sarah ploughed her money into the non-stop, four-decade-long build of a higgledy-piggledy home in which to house them. Her "spirit" building, all seven floors and 500 rooms of it, still exists. It's a big California tourist draw. Dressed in widow's weeds and patently channelling the spirit of Great Expectations's Miss Havisham, Mirren nicely overplays Sarah with the straight face such movies demand. Taking it equally seriously is co-star Jason Clarke. He's the psychiatrist brought in by the concerned gun company to judge Sarah's mental state, but who begins questioning his own sanity as crazy stuff starts oozing from the house's many nooks and crannies. The Spierig brothers' film depends rather too much on contrived jump scares, and offers little new to titillate the hardened horror fan. But it's a slick, decently made and enjoyably daft watch, with the main surprise being that it took predominantly Australian money and talent to bring such a quintessentially American story to the screen.