The Woman in Black

Special Note:
I did not read the story this film is based on prior to seeing the movie. My wife did. She shook her head throughout, as it seemed most of the movie was only loosely based on the story from which it comes. I'd recommend not reading the story before watching the movie, as I was much more entertained by it, because I had nothing to compare it to, than my wife was.

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I like a good horror story. Classic ghost stories can be some of the most effective to put on screen, because the forced perspective of a film allows the director and writer to really play up the tunnel-vision we get while watching a movie and startle you.

The Woman in Black, a Hammer Films production released earlier this year and starring Daniel Radcliffe is a decent horror/ghost story. It has the right use of mood, music, lighting, and startle moments to be quite effective as a ghost story. The acting is good enough that it pushes the story along, and the cinematography and effects are quite good.

However, it is how they tell the tale, and especially the ending, that lets the movie down.

*START SPOILERS*

Radcliffe is a solicitor named Kipps sent to a creepy mansion in the boondocks to go through a dead woman's papers and make sure everything is ready so that his office can sell the house and property. When he arrives in the small town close to the house, he is treated poorly; everyone in the town wants him to go back to London, but no one explains why. It becomes a little absurd how they so blatantly try to push him out of town -- I think anyone coming into that situation would become a bit belligerent and stay.

After getting a ride out to the house, Kipps starts experiencing all the classic poltergeist signs: he sees shapes and movement, hears noises, and sees things have moved around the house. He also senses some malevolence.

When he returns to the village, the village's children start killing themselves in spectacular ways, usually in front of him.

He goes to dinner at the rich man's house and the man's crazy wife starts to tell him things about the ghost haunting the manor. What she says is important, because she is the classic "seer" of the story -- the person who lays out the ground-rules for the horror story and what needs to happen. After a couple of times talking with her, he realizes that the Woman in Black, as she is known to the villagers, is a woman who lost her child in the marsh, and they never found his body. This drove her to suicide. As a ghost, she now finds the children of the village and lures them to their deaths so that she can be surrounded by children.

This leads Kipps to realize that the ghost needs closure by finding her lost son. He and the rich man take the man's car out to the marsh and Kipps dives for thee wreckage where the boy died. They are successful at finding the boy's body, and Kipps brings it to the house and leads the ghost to it. As soon as she finds the boy, all the supernatural events around the house seem to cease, and he and the rich man break open her tomb and lay the boy's body with his mother, at rest at last.

Or is she?

As Kipps meets his nanny and his son at the train station, the Woman in Black appears, along with most of the dead children, and lead Kipps' son onto the train tracks. Kipps dives after him and they are both killed. However, they meet Kipps dead wife (and his son's mother), who leads them to the afterlife.

Fade to Black

The problem here is that the movie provides no explanation or reason why the rules of the world, as presented by the villagers and the seer, did not work. If the Woman found her son, which all the letters she wrote and what the dead children, through the seer, indicate needs to happen for the Woman to rest, there should be a happy ending to the story and the Woman in Black should not have killed Kipps and son. But she was not laid to rest by that action, which leaves the audience unsettled in all the wrong ways for a ghost story.

The problem comes in that I was left wondering, well after the movie, why the rules failed and why the Woman is still haunting the village. Why didn't the discovery of her son work? Why didn't she find peace, being reunited with him? Why did she seek vengeance on Kipps for trying to help her? With no explanation, not even a hint, as to why this action failed, you are left feeling like most of what you just watched was superfluous and without meaning. Why did they provide you with all of that information about the ghost if none of it was accurate? If all of it was inaccurate, why in the world would anyone continue to live in the village?

I have a feeling that this movie had a very different ending until they test-screened it and found that they likely had a modest hit on their hands. Once that happened, my guess is that they tacked on that ending to show the Woman is still around so they could make a sequel (which, by the way, is being written and produced right now).

*END SPOILERS*

All in all, The Woman in Black is a good horror/ghost story, mostly effective in all the right ways. However, the very ending scene leaves a bad taste in your mouth and, story-wise, invalidates everything you've just watched. The 90 minute running time is just about right, there is a quality cast doing a good job, and the effects, cinematography, and music are all effective and done well.