Hello Horror fans, Chris reporting in here wishing you all a very happy new year! Sorry for the lack of activity on the blog as of late, we have both been super-duper busy throughout December. Hope you had a fantastic Christmas and got what you expected from Santa!
To ring in the new year, Laura and I thought it seemed right to watch and review the first Horror film to be released in 2015 – The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. You might be familiar with the tagline which prominently features on all of its promotional posters – “She never forgives. She never forgets. She never left”. WELL horror fans, I think we can relate to the fabled woman in black – we will never forgive this shoddy sequel, we will never forget how lame it was, but we wished we’d left the cinema sooner! “What’s got your knickers in a twist about this film”, I hear you cry? Pop the kettle on, get comfy and read on…
For those not familiar with the storyline behind The Woman in Black series – it’s based around “Eel Marsh House“, a dilapidated manor set on the outskirts of the hamlet of Crythin Gifford. The building is connected by a windy stretch of road going through a marshy floodplain and, when the tide is high, the house is completely cut-off from the village. Apart from the fact that it’s a bit of a wreck, what makes this house spooky is that it’s haunted by the vindictive spirit of a woman dressed in black. After losing her son in the marsh pit surrounding the manor, she is hellbent on revenge against anyone who disturbs her.
“This is NOTHING like the brochure – send me back to blitzed London post-haste!”
So, with this in mind, let’s turn the clock forward 40 years to frenetic WWII London. A group of orphaned children, along with two teachers/caretakers Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox) and Jean Hogg (Helen McRory), are forced to relocate to the desolate British countryside. With nowhere else to go, they are all rehoused in the crumbling hovel that is Eel Marsh House. Amongst the thick grey fog, turbulent skies and dense undergrowth, Eel Marsh House looks the part. If there’s one single positive thing I can say about this film, it’s the scenery. When they enter the abandoned building, it’s character inside is exactly what you’d expect. Dingy wallpaper barely clings to the wall, candle lights flicker away listlessly, and everything is coated in a thick layer of dust.
Straight from the first night, the house begins to deliver some unexpected surprises. However, most of the action is focused in two places – the remains of what used to be a playroom upstairs (complete with skull-crushed dolls, a suspicious looking straw hat (?!!) and some dubious looking toys (see below photo)) and the cellar downstairs (which mostly contains a load of tat and memorabilia belonging to the late Mrs Drablow). As far as the children are concerned, the main focus is on Edward (Oaklee Pendergast), who stumbles upon the playroom during a game of hide ‘n’ seek and communicates with the spirit, leaving the room with a toy sailor that he carries around. From hereon-in, the children in Eve and Jean’s care begin to be killed off one by one and, as a result of an investigation conducted by Eve and the suave ex-war pilot Harry Burnstow (Jeremy Irvine), it’s revealed that their deaths are eventually linked to The Woman in Black.
“SO MUCH NOPE!!”
On paper (well, on screen) the plot sounds decent enough but, my word, director Tom Harper‘s translation of this onto the big screen is completely boring and dire. The clunky acting, vastly prolonged scenes and uninspiring story drags this film kicking and screaming its way through its 98 minute duration like a spoilt child who’s just been refused candy.
The film is relentlessly padded out to cover its shoe-string plot. This is mostly done through pointless sub-stories and characters that lend nothing to the crux of the story and only serve to stretch out the film further.
Notable examples of this include recurring flashbacks to Eve’s past where she is a single mother giving birth to a child that is consequentially taken away from her (single mothers giving birth back then was a bit of a naughty no-no), a paint-by-numbers attraction scene between Eve and Harry where they cop off like high-school sweethearts whilst the kids are left unattended on an airport during WWII (well done Eve, your ‘caretaker of the year’ award is in the post), and some more flashbacks from Harry where he talks about the time he left his crew for dead in a sinking ship. I guess that Mr Harper is doing this to try and give these characters a bit of a back-story, but it would’ve had more effect if their back-stories actually influenced and drove the main storyline forward.
“Ah, I knew I’d applied too much foundation today”
What about the jumpy bits? Yes, it had a few but they are recycled and sporadic in nature. The only real jump I had in the film was something seemingly innocent, when one of the kids is joshing about with Edward by putting on a gasmask. This works because it’s unexpected and catches me off-guard. The other scares in this film follow the tired cookie-cutter formula that you see in the majority of ‘Hollywood horror’ – build suspense (get the viewer ready for a scare) then deliver it. The technique is blatantly rinsed to death throughout the entire film, leaving even horror novices glued to their chairs as they can clearly see when the scares are coming. The attempted-frights become a little more frequent and culminate towards the end when the spirit finally lets rip and tries to take Edward’s life, but it’s sporadicalness leaves a gaping void in the middle where literally nothing happens and I’d felt like I’d taken valium.
Put it this way folks, I recently had to buy two sets of RCA oxygen-free phono leads and a USB-to-lightening connector from Amazon – this virtual shopping list actually provided me with more excitement than watching “The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death”.
Hang on Mr Harper, I’m not done yet! Before leaving the cinema, I had to stand around while Laura quickly visited the “whiz palace”. I’d say that the vast majority of people who left the cinema shared exactly the same opinion as outlined above; a unanimous cry of “I almost fell asleep during that film” and “I was waiting for it to scare me but it didn’t”. Also, whilst idly feeding coins into the parking machine prior to driving home, Laura spotted a big gangly spider clinging onto the machine which gave her more of a fright.
TLDR version – the film sucks, avoid it like the plague. Phew!! OK, rant over.
Lampy-metre
A solid 1/10 here on the lampy-metre. Enough said…goodnight everybody!
It's Under The Bed... 