10 True Stories Explained By Horror Movies

Winchester - or Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built if you like your titles planted squarely on the nose - is blessed with a Helen Mirren performance of a grieving woman coming to terms with the afterlife. Based on the very real Winchester Mystery House, the film tells the story of Sarah Winchester's obsession with abating the spirits of those that had died by the Winchester rifles made in her family name. To appease them, she felt she had to continually build a house of many rooms in some real estate fuelled haze.

Winchester the movie, then, suggests that this frenzied desire to build wasn't simply for the sake of it. Instead, Mirren depicts a woman driven to create rooms for spirits so they may move on to the other side - throwing in Winchester's own obsession with the number 13 as a tool for sealing more troublesome spirits away. Only thirteen nails can contain a dastardly ghost, didn't you know?

The film is built on and into the legend of Sarah Winchester from the ground up, even if it does incorporate a ridiculous ham-fisted plot to try and give the story a touch of Hollywood glamour. It's a nice introduction and speculation on the Mystery House, even if sorely unimpressive considering the source material.