Apparently it’s finally happened. Somehow, the Asylum managed to either get sick of mockbusters or got sick of getting slammed relentlessly in the critical community for churning out a constant stream of knockoffs, because for the first time in a good long while that I can recall, the Asylum has released an actual original horror movie, of which they’ve sent me a copy.
And they’re even going back to their roots, handling The Haunting of Winchester House, based on the (allegedly) true story of Sarah Winchester, in which she was told by a medium that, if she didn’t stop building onto her house, she would be torn to pieces by the various ghosts that haunted her due to the fact that she and her family made obscene amounts of money by killing a bunch of people with their rifles.
I’m frankly torn. On the one hand, there are a few good scares in here, some nice suspense building, and it’s the first original horror flick from the Asylum I’ve seen in some time. And yet, there’s also plenty of confusing parts, an admittedly rather half baked ending (in retrospect, they will MOCK THEIR OWN ENDING. In canon.) and it’s based on a truly weak sauce legend that was basically “some rich old coot wouldn’t stop building a house because the 19th century equivalent of Miss Cleo told her not to or she’d die. By ghosts.”.
Seriously?
The Screenhead Ten Scale cuts through my indecision, pats me on the shoulder and says, hey, when in doubt, split the difference. Thus, Haunting of Winchester Manor gets a six out of ten, and a note of hearty encouragement to stop ripping off EVERY MOVIE THAT HITS THEATERS.
Welcome back to original horror, Asylum. We missed you.
BuZzLinks said
October 14 2009 @ 5:50 pm
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Lanny Bianchi said
October 16 2009 @ 2:39 am
I am going to be real frank with you I thought the move stunk.It had no sense of dirrection or anything that could be clled a movie. one of the worst movies i have ever seen. I rented the dvd.I thought it was going to be a good movie. never could catch on to it. It looked liked the move was just slapped togather. Why kill the family off? Never said where the fanily went after woman seen they were all dead,Did the go back to the house or what. to many ends left open. and if you thinking og saving it for part two please just leave it be. this movie really sucked.
Steve Anderson said
October 18 2009 @ 1:35 pm
Lanny–we welcome frankness here. We encourage it. After all, we give it out good enough; we’d better expect to get it as well. Though where your logic is somewhat flawed is that you’re not considering this in terms of the larger body of work. For the last two, three years or so, The Asylum has made a way of life out of ripping off every movie in sight. Now, they’re starting to do some original stuff again, and this should be encouraged. So some allowances are made. Basically, they killed the family off for the twist ending. That and it’s basically how the whole thing worked in the first place; we THOUGHT it was a family attacked by ghosts. It turns out it’s just a whole bunch of ghosts in one house. You’ve got to admit, ghosts fighting ghosts is kind of cool and very seldom done. If you didn’t like it, that’s fine–that’s why we have a comments section in the first place–but I think there’s a couple things you’re not considering, and probably should, before you make an assessment.
2012 Supernova Movie Review–And The Asylum Goes Back To the Remake Well - Movies, Reviews and More. said
November 3 2009 @ 10:49 am
[...] how, when I wrote about The Haunting of Winchester House, how GREAT I thought it was that The Asylum was finally getting out of the mockbuster trend and no [...]