A movie based on the infamous Winchester Mystery House, the mansion built in San Jose, Calif., by Sarah Winchester known for its endless maze of rooms, would seem to be the ideal subject matter for a horror film – especially with the backstory of Winchester’s desire for never-ending construction for fear the structure was haunted.

Yet the promising premise gets saddled into a rather mundane creation with the lackluster “Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built.” Despite the presence of Helen Mirren, this is a dull, plodding horror film that could have easily taken place in any house and it really wouldn’t have made any difference.

Instead of giving audiences insight into the unique structure, with its rooms that lead to dead ends and incomplete hallways and stairwells, “Winchester” opts to just provide a typical haunted house film.

Jason Clarke plays Eric Price, a widowed doctor who is summoned to the house by Sarah Winchester (Mirren) to do a psychological examination to determine whether she should give up controlling interest to the family business – the Winchester rifle company.

Price agrees and arrives to discover Winchester is convinced the house is inhabited by ghosts of people killed by her family’s rifles and the only way for these ghosts to have any kind of peace in the afterlife is to have a room built in the house especially for them.

It’s a theory Price finds unbelievable at first, until his past starts to haunt him and strange things start to happen to Winchester’s niece Marion (Sarah Snook) and her young son (Finn Scicluna-O’Prey) – events that force Price to question his own sanity.

Directors Michael and Peter Spierig use every cliche in the haunted house handbook in “Winchester,” with a bunch of jump scares that won’t make the audience jump, and creepy corridors that could have been a little creepier if they had been more imaginative.

It doesn’t help that the story, co-written by the Spierigs with Tom Vaughan, also relies heavily on haunted house cliches – a poorly paced script that spends the first hour with a bunch of dull dialogue exchanges between characters before realizing it is supposed to be a horror film and then throwing together a few interactions with ghosts in the final 30 minutes.

To their credit, Mirren and Clarke try to get as much out of the material as possible, but they don’t get much to work with. They deserve better, much like the audience and the house, for that matter.

If you want to learn about the Winchester Mystery House there are more intriguing routes to go, including several documentaries, than this tepid excuse for a horror film.

Starring: Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke

Directed by: Michael and Peter Spierig

Rating: PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, drug content, some sexual material and thematic elements

Playing at: Regal Greenwood Mall Stadium 10, Highland Cinemas (Glasgow)

Grade: D