I’m not spoiling anything by saying nothing in this movie is true. And I know, “based on actual events” disclaimer should be taken with a massive hunk of salt, but they basically just made up a story around a legend around a rumor. Even when a person is real, they changed the gender. Although to be fair, a red-headed boy ranks 10x higher on the creepiness scale than a red-headed girl.

I’m kind of amazed a mass-shooting hasn’t been made into a horror movie yet. Maybe it’s too real for the group of people who write about summoning demons to have sex with humans against their will. This movie isn’t actually about a mass shooting, it’s more about the indiscriminate power behind a weapon that can’t distinguish between innocent and criminal.

And also about Helen Mirren’s fabulous American accent.

Sarah Winchester (real person) moved to a house (true) in San Jose, California (debatable) in the late 1800s. She supposedly took with her the spirits that haunted her since the death of her husband and daughter. These spirits are pissed they died at the hands of the guns that the Winchester’s Repeating Arms company made. You gotta give credit to Americans. When they get pissed at a company, there’s no stopping that boycott. Even when pesky death comes.

So Sarah decides that in order to manage the endless barrage of ghosts that are bound and determined to haunt her, she will take on the most massive and endless renovation project in history over the next few decades. And as anyone knows who has done renovations on their house or hovel, it’s a nightmare. Time frames don’t matter. Everything costs more than you’d expect. Strange men are just constantly sawing things.

But Sarah believes that the ghosts want her to build them an exact replica of the room they died in. She’s basically setting up a Goth AirBnB for these fuckers and not getting paid or even get a good review from them. The spirit either forgives her and moves on, or decides to be a prick and hangs out in his customized room for all of eternity. And this is valuable real estate, even before Silicon Valley moves in. But Sarah’s got to just let everyone be their true selves, and locks up the room and keeps the ghost inside until it’s ready to forgive her.

The Chief Legal Officer of the Winchester Company decides to enlist a shady doc from San Francisco to determine if Sarah is still fit to be on the board (AKA, do we still need to pay this loon?). Dr. Eric Price (not real) brings along his own haunted baggage and excessive amounts of morphine. As one would expect from any good house guest in the early 1900s. It’s not long before Price starts to see the angry ghost and although blaming it on the drugs helps him at first, he starts to realize the “House That Spirits Built” is not a misnomer. Although the constant carpenters are probably like, “Wtf!? We built this, you old nut job!”

All hell breaks loose when the nearby San Francisco earthquake happens. Which is VERY  real, and VERY easy to research, so not sure why the filmmakers thought they could get away with just changing the time of its occurrence. The occupants of the house (who apparently have never been through an earthquake before, as if those are also fake), blame the rumblings on the ghosts. Aftershocks are very real. Get the hell out of your death house!

It’s not really an ending, since Sarah lives a couple more decades and kept capitalizing on her murder tools. It’s also not an ending because this story isn’t real. The real Sarah Winchester and her San Jose house is actually a crazy story. She kept these carpenters around 24/7. Which I get. People are lonely, the smell of fresh sawed wood is a lovely aroma to mask the ever march of death, and the white noise of hammering and throwing boards is very soothing. Actually, that last one might just be me.