Haunting of Winchester House (2009)

Look this movie was... Well it wasn't that it was horrible Now the acting Jesus Christ that was horror at its best But the film was more typical ghost movie cheesy music cheap scares that you saw coming Due to the fact every ghost flick has used them to death already And it felt like I was watching a goosebumps episode It wasn't scary at all In fact the movie was predictable everything was predictable The best way to describe it is you know when you watch a movie and then you watch The movie again you know everything that's going to happen that's what it was like Although I hadn't seen it I saw the scares or should I say the lack of scares coming And knew the ending straight away Here's the lo down A family moves into to a house now the story goes Susan (Lira Kellerman) and Drake (Michael Holmes), a couple become caretakers Of an old mansion now Susan and Drake and their daughter are relentlessly tormented by ghosts who dwell in the house and finally turn to Harrison Dent (Tomas Boykin), who is a paranormal investigator whom they hope may be able to put the house's ghosts to rest.Here's the bad part it was so predictable I guessed the ending within 20 minutes you only have to listen to the dialogue and boom you know the ending Without giving anything away I thought around 10-20 minutes in I said this is what's gonna happen and guess what that's how it ended Second the scares are typical doll comes to life crawls slowly towards the bed And disappears and I thought bet it pops back up and scares the crap Out of her and guess what it did Another scene a blanket floats in the air their daughter slowly walks over to it Ominous music playing I thought she'll pull off the sheet And I bet there's nothing but air and guess what she pulls off the blanket And nothing but air Look it wasn't a bad movie just predictable from the ending the scares you knew they were going to happen before they did

Apart from getting the history of The Winchester House completely wrong, there is no substance in the story, the characters are not well developed, so you don't really care what happens to them, and the trite horror movie set-ups are the very definition of campy. It isn't scary and you can't even laugh at it as a suitable schlock flick. A complete waste of an hour and a half.For those of us who are familiar with the actual Winchester House in San Jose, CA, the house portrayed is not the actual house, nor is it in its actual location. How hard would it have been for the makers of this film to have done even a little bit of research to get the content in the ballpark? I love the genre, so this comes from someone who can appreciate a good horror movie. Unfortunately, this isn't one!

OK this plot had more holes in it than swiss cheese...the effects were lowsy, the storyline was awful - but it did have something and I will explain at the end. The acting When the Fedex girl arrived, the acting was OK; then there was the first lady introduced an English actress and here acting was terrible, and from thereonin, the acting went downhill especially the wooden guy. He was the worst of a bad bunch of actingCasting Now there are 3 main characters, the mother who looked maybe 27 tops, the father would could have gotten away with 30 tops; then the daughter who looked like she was maybe 13-15 but switched from being a teenager into the mommy mommy thing. I think she was supposed to be about 8 years old and anyone with a pair of eyes could see that she was NOT 8 years old. Inconsistencies The father actually coughed up blood a few times because he had acquired TB; where no one knows??? And then he was fine the next minute; then he wasn't - was he sick or not ?? and more to the point; if he was dead (spoiler sorry) then how would he get sick ??? Quite often he would cough up blood, then the shot would go onto his wife, then back to him and hey presto no blood. Anyone editing crew who watched this movie should be ashamed, hell I felt ashame for them. Scary? Absolutely not, the majority of scary moments came when one of the main cast was looking at the camera and someone would walk behing them in the distance - which is OK once, alright twice, three times? four ? man it happened about twenty times. The end The end was OK actually; not for the reasons you probably think, but the storyline picked up towards the end despite everything else being awful. I am guessing the writer wrote the end of the film then thought 'hey that's a great ending...how do we get there?' Now I have absolutely ripped this movie to pieces because it is truly truly a huge piece of garbage, how can I convince anyone to watch this movie? Well I can't really but if you switch your mindset from this being a horror movie to a comedy; you will have a real laugh. I was going to turn this off, but my wife said comon let's watch it because she was laughing like crazy. So I did and I got what she was laughing at and that was it, we spent the rest of the time pulling the movie to piece making fun of it. That was the most enjoyable part. On a footnote, it also comes in 3D! on DVD....I watched the 2D version and I cannot say I will be watching the 3D format. In summary, I am struggling to find a worse movie..

This movie was quite a surprise. Usually the movies made by "The Asylum" are mediocre, but this one was quite out of the normal standard.The storyline and plot was intense and something you immediately got yourself immersed into, because it is compelling and interesting. The story takes you places in a good pace and it leaves you wanting more.Now, I have been reading some of the reviews here already, and I will agree with what many have chiseled out, that the acting in the movie is not among the best of movie performances, but what drives and carries "Haunting of Winchester House" is not the acting, it is the story, the gloomy feeling of the place and the genuinely creepy sounds. Now, don't get me wrong, the acting wasn't all throughout bad through the entire movie, but there were points where it was painstakingly bad to look at. But the mood of the movie luckily made more than up for this fact.What I didn't fully understand was the directors obsession with having shadowy persons walk past the camera view. Sure it worked the first time, but it was done repeatedly over and over, to the point where it was just annoying to look at. There is nothing scary about some dark, silhouette passing through the view of the camera.Also, the "ghost", and I use the term loosely here, well they were more like walking dead (not zombies as per se). Had they chosen to go with a more ghost-oriented approach, the movie would have had so much more depth and value. The "ghosts" were too physical. Had they been transparent, wispy, incorporeal projections of themselves, it would have added so much more to the movie. But in all fairness, the main "ghost" was sort of disturbing and scary nonetheless.And the ending was amazing. That totally took me by surprise. I didn't see that coming. And an ending like that always sits well with me. I like it when movies are unpredictable and doesn't end in the traditional sugar-coated-Hollywood-fashion-ending that most movies do.As a fan of hauntings and supernatural phenomena, I found "Haunting of Winchester House" to be quite interesting, and the movie turned out to be much more impressive than I had anticipated. If you like ghost movies, and can live with some, at times, less than mediocre acting, then you should definitely check out "Haunting of Winchester House", because it is really quite good. Truth be told, then I had goosebumps several times throughout the movie.