Candy and a Movie: Movie #45 The Woman in Black (Remake)

The Woman in Black (2012)

That's a creepy poster.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596365/

Add Colombia to the list of viewers.

OK, I know what you're thinking. I better not say something dumb like “Hey I bet you're wondering why I've reviewed this movie twice. Well that's because this is the first time that I saw a remake and the original”. So I won't say it. I will say that usually right away you can decide if you like the original or the newer version better after seeing both but I am having a hard time. Let's get to business.

If you saw any of the commercials or the trailer for this than you know that The Woman in Black is going to rely on pop out scares. They are cheap, you should want to be scared by things like suspense, the atmosphere and tones as well as creepy villains. The movie stars Daniel Radcliffe, the guy who played Harry Potter. I don't care what roles he will play in the future or if I've seen his dong on the internet (will never forgive the person who sent me that link), I will always seeing him as a fully robed Harry Potter. Before we meet Harry though, there is a scene of three little girls having a tea party. Pale little children are a go to for horror movies and they are pretty effective for this scene. The party seems to be going well until all three children get up and jump out the second story window and a woman screams. That is a tea party faux pas where I am from.

We meet Harry right after that when he is sent by his law office to go settle the estate of some woman who has just died. I'm going to say that I have the same problem with him as with anytime Shia Labeouf tries to play an adult, they just look to young for the role. On the way to some old town in the country where the woman used to live, Harry has a dream about how his wife died in childbirth. Well that is different from the original, his wife was in that movie. On the train he meets Daily who gives him a ride to the inn. They tell Harry the only room that is available is the attic. What they don't tell him is that it's the same attic that the girls jumped out of. They might be gone but they're creepy dolls are still laying(lying) around.

The people of the town. Wait. The towns folk (sounds more British) are all giving Harry the stink eye. Clearly they want him to leave. Kind of like the last movie Intacto, the movie is all over the place still. People are acting strange and there is no explanation why. This time it even feels like things are being rushed. This guy named Keckwick takes Harry to this mansion across the marsh and it sure is a fixer-upper. Looks like the place that ghosts of children or women in black would hang out. Possibly both at the same time. It's there that we get our first glimpse of the title character but Harry doesn't notice because he's too busy being a couple months younger than me but he has like a four year old son. They didn't have teen mom back then. The first thing Harry does do is get to work on some paper work. He stumbles across the death certificate of a seven year old kid who drowned in the marsh. That is never something you want to just come across.

After sometime fooling around with papers, Harry hears something upstairs. He goes up the stairs and looks down a creepy long hallway. Ask yourself this, if you were in a beat up mansion where someone had just died, you had a kids death certificate in your hands and then you hear a noise upstairs when you know no one should be there, what you you do? I know I would either leave and wet myself or I would find the safest looking room, sit down on the floor and cry while wetting myself. He is poking around upstairs and a bird flies at the camera. First jump. He sees the woman in black standing in a cemetery outside. Oh ya, the house has it's own cemetery so the outside is just as scary as inside. He runs outside to see her but is greeted with a thick fog and the sounds of screaming. Someone is dying somewhere. The tension builds but when the fog somewhat lifts all that we see is Keckwick driving in to pick up Harry.

They go to the police station where Harry wants to give a report on what he's just heard when rough looking girl and her worried brother stroll in. The brother says that she's just had a bunch of lye to drink and Harry is the only one close enough to help her. He tells her that everything is going to be alright and tries to calm her down. Instead of listening to him, she pukes her guts up over him and dies. I guess in the end, Harry was telling a lye. Oh boy. Someone tells Harry to not go back to the house and if this wasn't a movie, I don't think he would've. The place looks too creepy.

He has dinner over at Daily's house. I thought it would be spelled Daly but IMDB says no way. Most of the movie Harry is by himself but being only 5'6 in real life just adds to his childish look when he spends time hanging around adults in this scene. Daily's wife is a totally nut and she starts acting crazy during dinner. Daily yells for her medicine. It looked to me like all he did was knock her out with chloroform, modern medicine has come a ways.

Harry travels back to town looking for a lawyer. A girl pops out and I've jumped now two times. The towns folk think that Harry has brought the woman back from the house and he is the reason that lye girl died. Daily shows up just in time to save Harry from them and they go back to his house. He tells Daily that he is going to stay at the house that night and Daily lets his dog go with Harry to keep him company. Harry gets back to murder mansion and checks out the graveyard to see if there are any more signs of the now famous woman. He looks up at the house and sees her looking out of one of the upstairs windows. He rushes up to the room, peeks out the window and only we see that her face is right behind him in the window. I liked that part, high creepiness levels.

Back to paper work. Harry finds out that the seven year old who died was adopted by the family who lived at the mansion. The real mother was the sister of the new mom and the biological mom did not want to give up her baby. They weren't good to her at all. Harry naps a little bit and when he wakes up, the picture of the adoptive parents faces have been x'ed out. It's never good for pictures to do that to themselves, I would much rather have people just disappear out of them. The next 30 minutes or so are the best part of the movie. It's just Harry going room to room getting scared by the woman in black as he tries to put together the story of what went on there.

SPOILER SECTION

So we've made out that the woman in black is the sister of the people who lived there and the boys real mother. They had a bad relationship but her ghost doesn't need to be murdering all of the kids in town. Then we find out that she hung herself in the mansions nursery. Dead kids ghosts start showing up and right when it looks like Harry is about to get it, Daily shows up to the rescue again. Harry goes back to town and another girl dies because of the woman in black. It's at this moment that I think Harry starts to believe that if he would've left, the kids still would be alive. It's indirectly his fault. Harry then shifts the blame to Daily for taking him to the house in the first place if he knew about the woman in black already.

Now there is a whole scene of Harry going to the marsh (which looks like a pond of chocolate pudding) and trying to find the dead boys body so he can reunite it with the woman in black. They find him and put him in the mom's coffin. You think everything is fine but there are weird things said like the woman in black's ghost shouting “I'll never forgive”. Harry's son shows up at the train station and they get tickets to go back home. While Harry is saying by to Daily, the kid walks on to the tracks and Harry lunges down to save him just a train is coming. Instantly you think that they are dead but then you see them after the train goes by. Except you don't, you only see their ghosts. Harry's ghost wife shows up and the ghost family walks together into the horizon.

I think I do know which one is better based on the ending's alone. The originals is one of the more shocking final scenes to a movie that I've ever seen. Here it is if you don't remember. The new one is a family of ghosts reuniting. That's not how I want my horror movies to end.

LETS WRAP THIS UP

Favorite Scene: Favorite scene's this time. Has to be that 30 minutes of the last time that Harry is in the house alone. A bunch of scares from ghosts.

Memorable Lines : “I will never forgive”

Rating : Has to be 6 strands of black liquorice. Movie isn't exactly well put together, could've used better story telling but did build up a little suspense. Probably not as good as the original (not that the original was amazing) and I probably won't watch it again. I'm not bummed that I watched it though.

Alternate Ending : Alternate ending isn't everyone dies but it's happy. It's everyone dies and it's insane. The way it should've been. That was probably a spoiler. Technically everyone doesn't die so you can still watch.

What I would do if I was the main character : You never really hear about ghosts in Canada. I would probably leave the marsh asap and get on a one month boat ride across the Atlantic and spend some time there.

What Happens in the Sequel: Really don't think they could do a sequel. A prequel showing the slow and painful first mental and then physical breakdown of the woman in black which eventually turns her into a ghost would be cool. Doesn't that sound pleasant.