Postby shanebrown » Thu May 31, 2018 2:26 am
I've seen two horror films over the last two nights - both very different in style.
The first was Winchester, starring Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, owner of the infamous Winchester house. Despite a cast that is unlikely to appeal a great deal to a younger audience, it still seems to rely on the jump scares that litter teen horror films these days. The story revolves around the Winchester gun company employing a doctor to example Sarah Winchester in the hope he will declare her insane. When he gets to the house, one that she is always adding rooms to, he finds thing are not what they seem. The story of the Winchester house would be an interesting one, but this is relatively predictable horror movie, that is rarely creepy or even horrifying. If feels like a straight to DVD effort, which it probably would have been without Mirren's presence. It holds the attention but is very mundane.
Conversely, Marrowbone (aka: The Secret of Marrowbone) is a film that doesn't rely on jump scares at all. The first half hour or so is rather similar to the Dirk Bogarde film Our Mother's House, about a group of children who pretend their mother is still alive so that they are not split up. After that, it takes a series of bizarre and unexpected turns, which may or may not involve hauntings. It is a film that is too long and which has pacing issues, and yet the attention is held because the audience are literally kept worrying until close to the end as to what is going on. The explanation at the end isn't all that surprising, but as it is one of many possible ones that the viewer could have thought of through the film, it still works well as a mystery. Rising star George MacKay seems to get better with each film, and Charlie Heaton from Stranger Things also does well here. In fact they are both better than Mirren in Winchester, although they have a much more interesting tale to tell here.
Oddly, most people aren't likely to be chilled a great deal by either horror film, if, indeed, Marrowbone is a horror film at all. But there's little doubt that it's that film out of the two which is likely to live on in the mind of the viewer after the closing credits.
As a side note, it's quite interesting that a scene that we see in the trailer and in press photos does not appear in the finished film. This used to be a common practice (and is the case with an Elvis film or two), but it's quite unusual these days for a scene that looks like it's going to be a key part of the film not to appear!