Review of Haunting of Winchester House

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