WINCHESTER Review

Though the directing duo of brothers Michael and Peter Spierig made one of the worst films of 2017 in what was the eighth Saw film it was hard not to hold out hope for what these guys might do outside the IP pool given Jigsaw was likely an opportunity they couldn't (financially) turn down. And so, in what feels like their true follow-up to their highly underrated and underseen 2014 time travel flick, Predestination, the brothers Spierig take on the real life mysteries likely still held within the walls of the winding Winchester mansion that is located in San Jose, California and was constantly under construction by the widowed Sarah Winchester for thirty-eight consecutive years until her death in 1922. Weird, right? Definitely. Couple this unique spin on the haunted house premise with the fact the Spierig's have somehow managed to attract the talents of rather pedigreed actors like Jason Clarke and the indelible Helen Mirren and one has to wonder what the attraction was. The Spierig's also reunite with Predestination star Sarah Snook here, but Snook is unfortunately underutilized as Mrs. Winchester's niece who has recently moved into the ever-growing mansion with her son after the death of her husband. This is all to say that Winchester has plenty of potential and while it never fully capitalizes on the ample opportunity it has to transcend the genre trappings and become something of a more self-conscious and timeless work it is a solid and sometimes even surprising haunted house tale that uses the audiences expectations to its advantage and takes certain elements in directions that feel fertile. The Spierig's screenplay, in collaboration with Tom Vaughan, relies too heavily on jump scares to garner the necessary reactions for being a member of the horror genre, but even still-they serve their purpose more often than not. Resorting to these easy, cheap scares feels a way of accounting for a requirement the Spierig's weren't really interested in though, as Winchester is seemingly more inclined to explore how cruelty, grief, and loss can affect people in different ways and to varying degrees. If the Spierig's had figured out a more inherently haunting way to convey their tone and the actions of those supposedly trapped souls in the rooms of the titular mansion this might have been a more convincing study on such topics, but as it is the film comes and goes with more simplicity than it does depth or scares.

I, FRANKENSTEIN Review

There is little to say about a film or anything really when it feels the "artists" behind it didn't care enough to invest their own interests in it. There is little vision to be held with something like I, Frankenstein as it is nothing more than a typical January release, an ugly step-sister to the summer blockbusters that have equally silly stories or premises, but real vision and money behind them. With something like I, Frankenstein what we have is the writer of such blockbusters as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and the first G.I. Joe, but who also has more credible fare like Australia (c'mon you know you liked it) and Collateral to his name and has now apparently earned the right to direct his own feature and so Lakeshore Entertainment, for some unknown reason, entrusted him with a rather large budget and gave him free reign to pen a script that concerned Victor Frankenstein's monster living on into the modern world and being caught in the middle of a war that has been raging between demons and gargoyles. Sound ridiculous? It is. Its essentially another attempt to capitalize on bringing well known, well respected properties back to the big screen in more gritty fashion. It seems Stuart Beattie, the aforementioned writer turned director, decided he'd go just outside the realm of fairy tales and instead chose to pick from the iconic roster of horror figures and give them an all CGI environment with dark and brooding attitudes that would be fine if this were a substantial take on the gothic romanticism of Mary Shelley's source material, but instead it seems to want to achieve little more than box office success and disregards any sense of deeper storytelling in order to fit squarely into this pre-ordained January genre. It is an ugly genre, one where we get movies year in and year out like any one of the Underworld films (which this so proudly touts as being produced by the same people) or last years Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters or even Season of the Witch from two years ago (see a trend?). It is one of those films, set in a period where set designs call for grotesque statues and worn out castles, where CGI baddies look ridiculous and we forget about character and story the moment we walk out of the theater. You'd think, given Beattie's track record in writing he would jump at the chance to make his own film and be keen on leaving a good impression so as to earn another turn behind the camera, but if I, Frankenstein is any indication he should never be allowed to direct or pen a script again.