‘Winchester’ Directors Share What to Expect From Their New Film

In the years since they began directing movies, Michael and Peter Spierig have tackled aliens, vampires and serial killers, with their most recent film, Jigsaw, reviving the popular Saw series after a seven-year hiatus. Their next film, Winchester, marks new territory for the duo, as it explores a supernatural haunting and is based on true events. The filmmakers revealed what excited them about the project and exactly why audiences should be excited.

“First of all, we haven’t done a real supernatural, and we haven’t done a really scary movie before,” Michael told ComicBook.com. “There’s scary elements in Jigsaw, there’s some scary elements in Daybreakers as well, but we haven’t done an all-out ghost jump-scare type of movie really before, and that’s certainly what Winchester has, which is a fun thing to explore.”

Considered one of the most haunted houses in the world, Sarah Winchester constructed a labyrinthine house full of dead ends, staircases leading nowhere and other disorienting elements in hopes of confusing any ghosts seeking revenge. Winchester was the widow of the inventor of the Winchester rifle, with Sarah believing every person killed by the weapon tormented her in her home.

“Peter and I, we took a trip out to the house in San Jose, and we thought it was just the most incredible place, and it inspired us and we learned a lot about the history of the house, but also the history of Sarah Winchester, who she was as a person, as much as we possibly could, as much historical information that was out there,” Michael explained of his research. “We fell in love with the woman, and thought that she was probably a little misunderstood, it’s easy to define her as just a crazy person, but we didn’t really quite see her that way.”

In addition to the film being new territory for the filmmakers, it was also new territory for star Helen Mirren, with the brothers appreciating the lengths the actress went to in order to portray the widow.

“I know Peter and I used to say, as we were shooting these things where we’re throwing her against the wall, and having her crawl around in glass, and all of this stuff, it was like, ‘Can you believe that’s Helen Mirren on the ground?’” the filmmaker confessed. “She was wonderful and she actually had a great time. And I think that Winchester is a classic haunted house film in the sense of old Hammer Horror movies, or there’s a lot of that classic, I guess in many respects gothic horror, Victorian horror feel.”

Winchester hits theaters on February 2.

You can see the Spierigs’ work with Jigsaw, available now on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD.