This Horror Movie Is Based on a True

Story.
 Helen Mirren as the widow Sarah Winchester, who in real life did build an elaborate home, but it’s not
what you think.Credit...Ben King/CBS Films and Lionsgate
By Robert Ito

 Jan. 26, 2018

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The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, Calif., is incredibly whimsical or intensely eerie, depending
on how you view such things, with stairs leading to the ceiling and doors that open to nowhere. The grand
estate was the home of Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms fortune, who,
according to legend, had workers ceaselessly laboring on the house for decades, from 1884 until her death
in 1922. She undertook the project at the behest of a New England seer to delay her own demise, one
version of the story goes, or to calm the spirits of the thousands of souls killed throughout the ages by
Winchester rifles, as another version has it.

The tale has all the makings of a good horror flick: a mysterious medium; a weird, possibly haunted
house; a reclusive heiress who may or may not have been insane; ghosts. Best of all, the story is true — or
is it?
In “Winchester,” which opens Friday, Feb. 2, the directors Peter and Michael Spierig (“Predestination,”
“Jigsaw”) have taken the Northern California tale at its spooky word, filling the mansion with levitating
rifles, rocking chairs that move by themselves, and the specters of an army of long-dead war veterans and
murder victims. Then there’s Helen Mirren, dressed head to toe in mourning black, as the mysterious Ms.
Winchester. Cue the fin de siècle jump scare.

Studio marketers are playing up the “true story” angle on trailers and posters and news releases, hoping to
make the already scary story even more so. But the studio also added the label because it couldn’t assume
that people outside Northern California would have even heard of Sarah Winchester and her house.
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“Winchester” is the latest in a grand line of horror films to trade on its supposed veracity. “Based on a true
story,” the trailers to these films trumpet, or “inspired by actual events.” The 1979 “The Amityville Horror”
was based on a supposed haunting from 1975 (“You will believe,” the trailer intoned). The macabre
exploits of Ed Gein, the Wisconsin murderer who fashioned furniture and clothing out of human body
parts, inspired films from“Psycho” to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (“What happened is true,” one film
poster read) to “The Silence of the Lambs.”

And the practice shows no sign of abating. Last year, there were “Amityville: The Awakening” (“inspired
by true events”), the 18th in the series, and the U.F.O. thriller “Phoenix Forgotten” (“based on shocking
untold true events”); “Conjuring 3” is still to come. But these are horror films. Do we need them to be
authentic as well?

“If you can establish that there’s a true story, or that there are factual elements being woven into the story,
then you’ve taken a big step in inducing a creepy mood in your audience,” said Stephen Prince, a cinema
studies professor at Virginia Tech and editor of “The Horror Film,” a collection of essays about the genre.

But how true to life can a horror film be, particularly ones, like “Winchester,” that are filled with spirits
and apparitions? And who would believe these claims in the first place?
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“The audience for horror films is a very self-selected audience, in a way that’s not true for a lot of other
genres,” Mr. Prince said. “People who go to these films are ready to believe.”
Image

The grand ballroom in the real Winchester house, in San Jose, Calif.Credit...Winchester Mystery House
Interestingly enough, the “true story” of Sarah Winchester, the one that keeps crowds flocking to the San
Jose tourist attraction, was in doubt long before the Spierig brothers had their go at it. Sure, there was a
real Sarah Winchester, and she did build a house in San Jose, but much of what people think they know
about the woman and her house involves spook stories cooked up by journalists of her day, said the
Winchester biographer Mary Jo Ignoffo, author of “Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress
to the Rifle Fortune.”

The stairs to the ceiling and the doors that lead nowhere? The result of earthquake damage left unrepaired
after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. All those rooms? A reflection of Ms. Winchester’s interest in
architecture and interior design — she came from a long line of woodworkers — not her belief in
spiritualists or the supernatural. Her supposed “gun guilt”?

“There’s no evidence for that,” Ms. Ignoffo said. “Nobody felt guilty about guns at the turn of the 20th
century. Everybody used them and needed them.”

“The fundamental lie is that the building of the house went on 24/7,” Ms. Ignoffo continued. “She didn’t
even live in the house for the last 15 years of her life.”

None of which will lessen a viewer’s enjoyment of the film — nor should it, particularly when it comes to
horror movies. “I think with horror, ‘based on a true story’ is much more loosely applied,” said Jonathan
Vankin, author of “Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies.”
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And with horror films about ghosts and paranormal sightings, you’re often getting what people say they
saw, amplified by all the appropriate special effects. “So there are really two levels of reality there,” he
said. “It becomes very meta. So yes, it’s a ‘true story,’ but maybe one with an unreliable narrator.”

Even so, the filmmakers read all they could about the house and its owner, consulted historical documents
and period photographs, and visited the home five times. (While exterior shots were filmed in San Jose,
much of the film was shot on a set in Australia, where the directors are based.) Among the completely true
elements included in the film are the home’s weird switchback staircase and the very unspooky reason for
it. Ms. Winchester had rheumatoid arthritis, and the low-stepped stairs functioned as something of a
ramp.

While the film and the biography couldn’t be less alike, both reach similar conclusions about Ms.
Winchester: She was considerably more heroic, and considerably less nuts, than she has sometimes been
painted. In Ms. Ignoffo’s book, Ms. Winchester is a savvy businesswoman; a beloved employer; and a
generous sister, aunt and philanthropist. In “Winchester,” she’s a tough heroine out to protect her family
and home from evil spirits and greedy company executives alike.

If the film often strays from the truth for the sake of a good scare — there’s no record that Ms. Winchester
was ever attacked by a boy possessed by the ghost of a murderous Confederate soldier, for example —
that’s fine with its creators. “Ultimately you’re not making a documentary,” Michael Spierig said. “You’re
making a piece of entertainment.”
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 27, 2018, Section AR, Page 14 of the New York
edition with the headline: Based on a True Story (The Studio Says So). Order Reprints | Today’s
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