The Woman in Black (James Watkins)

[TGM]

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Director: James Watkins

imdb

[TGM]

The movie looked really nice, and the story was vaguely interesting. But it's totally lazy as a horror film, relying solely on super predictable jump scares, which grew tiring after a while.

[EyesWideOpen]

I seemed to have liked the film slightly more than you TGM. Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds and Janet McTeer were all great in their roles. It had a good sense of dread and I disagree about the jump scares. There were definitely jump scares in this film but they were more subdued then the type you see in most modern horror films.

[Fezzik]

I was more impressed with it as a film than a horror film.

It was incredibly atmospheric and the performances were very good, but I think selling this as a straight horror film was a mistake. It's more of a creepy, tension filled drama to me.

I liked it, though.

The cold opening might be my favorite part.

[TGM]

See, I didn't feel an ounce of tension while watching this, just annoyance at how forced all of the horror aspects were. And I think that is what bothers me, because looking at this movie as a horror movie, I found it entirely obnoxious, and not the least bit scary.

But as a film on its own, it actually is fairly decent. I agree with both of you about the atmosphere and the acting, which were both well done here. But I'll disagree that the jump-scares were subdued. They were beyond over-used, not to mention overly predictable. And while everything else was good, they annoyed me enough throughout to give it a mild nay.

[megladon8]

Pretty good, despite a disappointing over-reliance on jump scares.

There were many eerie moments cheapened by loud booms and squawking birds.

[lovejuice]

My thought from the old thread:

Competently done, but sadly so much potential is lost.

The scare is very good though with a tint of unintentional humor. I can't help but notice the woman in black is a ghost with a penchant for scaring the audience rather than the character in the movie. (Oftentimes her apparitions are for our sake, while Radcliffe is oblivious. Meta!)

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Since the curse befalls on whoever lives in the village not just the one that witnesses the woman, I am curious how the townsfolk can go on living as a community. There seem to be unexplored tension here.

]

[lovejuice]

Also the scene I really like is when...

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Radcliffe performs his macabre ritual with the music boxes. It fascinates me how people have a tendency to rationalize supernatural phenomena. The result is an activity that has one leg in a spirit world and the other in even weirder world of human's "reason." I believe this is how all magics start.

Again, another lost potential that is worth exploring.

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[megladon8]

Why are old toys so terrifying?

[Dukefrukem]

I was more impressed with it as a film than a horror film.

It was incredibly atmospheric and the performances were very good, but I think selling this as a straight horror film was a mistake. It's more of a creepy, tension filled drama to me.

I liked it, though.

The cold opening might be my favorite part.

I disagree. I think this is one of the best GHOST stories we've seen in a long time. There was plenty of drawn out tension that did not rely on the jump scare tactic. There were a few cheap ones (the bird in the bedroom, the music boxes going off by themselves. That’s to be expected.

But what about the long drawn out scenes? The anticipation of the woman walking down the hallway, the boy walking from the swamp, the things that went on in the background without any character knowing. It was great! Why don’t you guys recognize these as legitimate horror tactics? There was nothing cheap about them!

I didn’t feel anything was forced.

[Dukefrukem]

Also the scene I really like is when...

[

Show Spoiler

Radcliffe performs his macabre ritual with the music boxes. It fascinates me how people have a tendency to rationalize supernatural phenomena. The result is an activity that has one leg in a spirit world and the other in even weirder world of human's "reason." I believe this is how all magics start.

Again, another lost potential that is worth exploring.

]

Loved this.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Why are old toys so terrifying?

Because (a) uncanny valley (love the candle-as-pupils fakeout) and (b) old toys means missing children.

Anyway, this film was delightful. The first half laid too harshly into the jump-scares, but by the end, the film finds its mojo, and the sequences with Radcliffe investigating the house carry some of the same delicious tension found in films like The House of the Devil and The Haunting. This movie is slight, but it's also a movie that's more about the production design and the costumes and the faces of the old-timey actors and, like Meg says, old abandoned toys in pitch-black attics.

In short, it's a small celebration of genre motif and cliche, and it's impossible for me to not enjoy it.

[Bosco B Thug]

I'm sorry, no, this film.

There's potential all over it, from Watkins being somewhat genuine as a maker of horror, to the spare and grim ghost story, but this is garbage with one good scene (Janet McTeer's freak-out), to parrot the exact same opinion as Film Freak Central.

Watkins can frame a shot and animate a camera, but that's all he can do, and he's created a film as facile as any assembly line Hollywood horror film. Opting against developing stakes, instead he serves us the great thrill of watching Radcliffe walk back and forth through the same hallway twenty times, in exactly the same way, without any sense of cause-and-effect.

This literally felt like half a movie, since the supposed "events" are completely random initiatives and made-up logic the characters pull out of their assholes. To the film's credit, I would've loved it to go on for another hour, with upped stakes, because, to hyperbole a little, nothing happens in this movie. Dreadful ending, in any case.

[Henry Gale]

I thought this was fairly good. The big scares are mostly jump scares, but they're not fake-outs (could be wrong, but for the most part they're real, ghostly terrors), and the best of them are ones I genuinely didn't see coming, with a good number of haunting slow burns thrown in for good measure. I do wish a lot less of them were punctuated with the same percussive DUNG, though.

The story is kinda flimsy the more I think about and the resolution leaves a bit to be desired, but overall, it's all just quiet framework for the more atmospheric horror-movie cogs of the thing to move along and built at a brisk and viscerally-friendly pace, and that's the stuff that's the most effective here (along with a really solid central performance from Radcliffe) and what ultimately makes it worth watching.

*** / ****

[Rowland]

I wasn't quite as keen on Drag Me to Hell as many, but it's a very similar, far superior version of this film. I agree with Bosco about the McTeer freak-out being the highlight, and too much of its remainder being ruined by overzealous sound design, exhaustingly obvious shock tactics, and an undercooked narrative. The atmosphere is compelling, but that has more to do with the set directors, locations scouts, and what have you, than what Watkins brings to table, which is a relatively fine eye, but little directorial sense for how to use it in an evocative or meaningful way beyond BOO! In fact, while I found his previous film, Eden Lake, morally repugnant, it's more compelling on the whole than this one. And Radcliffe is perfectly fine given what the role requires from him.

[Bosco B Thug]

Meanwhile, I watched the British TV movie version. It's a much better movie, although of course the tale in its original form wouldn't fly as a megaplex horror movie. The whole child self-mutilation thing was a construct created for the remake of course.

As it is originally, it's one of those inward, haunted-man's-psychology ghost stories, while the twist about strings of child deaths is only an afterthought tossed off towards the end. No "Daniel Radcliffe to the rescue!" stuff like that.

[Grouchy]

I ENJOYED THE HELL OUT OF THIS BAD MOVIE.

[Dukefrukem]

FAVORITE/TOP!!!

[Dukefrukem]

Didn't realize they made a sequel.