Hello and welcome to Jump Scare Central Station (JSCS for the already initiated). Here at JSCS, we can guarantee at least one jump scare will arrive every five minutes. Yes, there are many other places you could go to get this kind of service, but you should come to this one. “Why?” I hear you ask. Don’t you know you shouldn’t ask questions and just give us your money for something you have already been through one-thousand times? Just accept it… That will be thirteen dollars please. Thank you, theater one to your left.
This is the first review for 2015, and I hope The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death does not set the tone for what would be a dreadful year. But this sequel to the already mediocre 2012 film starring Daniel Radcliffe is so by-the-numbers I could not keep my mind from straying constantly. It is not that it is poorly executed, poorly acted, or anything like that. It just does everything you have seen before in all the familiar ways.
1941 London is not the best or safest place in the world to live. You know, the whole World War II thing. So, schoolteacher Eve (Phoebe Fox) and her headmistress Jean (Helen McCrory) round up some of their students to take them out to the countryside. One kid named Edward’s (Oaklee Pendergast, which is a hell of a name) parents died the night previous in a bombing, and he has taken to not talking. Unfortunately for them all, the estate they are staying in is the house from the first Woman in Black film.
I am sure Phoebe Fox is a fine actor, but here, all she is given to do is walk around dark places, sometimes with a lantern and sometimes not, calling out either “Hello?” or “Is anyone there?” I could count how many times this exact scene happens. I started chuckling to myself the more she said “Hello?” and because this movie is JSCS, you know how each one of those scenes is going to end. They become so routine you could count down to when the jump scare would take place.
Then there’s Edward. The character has been given the unfortunate trait of not speaking. So, it takes a very talented actor to convey things through his face. Pendergast has zero expressions the entire film, even before he is tranced by the titular woman in black. All we get is this zoned out, puffy cheeked, blank expression, so you can’t care about this kid at all. They just hope we will care because his parents are dead.
I do not want to keep harping on the jump scares, but they are such a big part of this movie I can’t avoid them. They pull out everything aside from opening a closet and a cat jumping out. They even throw in jump scares none of the characters see, hear, or respond to in anyway. For example, Eve is exploring the upstairs haunted room while a pilot she met on the train out there (War Horse‘s Jeremy Irvine) is down in the cellar listening to a recording of a woman, as you do in a horror movie. As the story the woman is telling builds to a climax, the film cuts up to the haunted room where we see the woman in black hang herself suddenly behind Eve. The score jolts. But Eve does not respond to this in anyway. It is just a jump scare for the audience.
A good haunted house movie is difficult to make. You need a really defined atmosphere to make it work. Only relying on screaming “Boo!” will momentarily shock the audience, but it does nothing to seep into their soul. A great horror movie needs to overtake you with its dread. The jump scare just pushes me away from the movie. It shows me director Tom Harper and all the people making it are not very confident in their material, so they have to rely on cheap surprises to keep going.
I do want to give the production designer some credit in making the film look like 1941. Granted, it’s a Hammer version of 1941, but it is still a believable world. It unfortunately has to be seen through this constant blue filter. Why do horror movies feel the need the make the whole frame blue, green, or brown? Can’t the film itself be spooky enough without that? No? Okay.
I understand why The Woman in Black 2 got the release slot it did. It is a totally unremarkable piece of horror filmmaking, despite some obvious craft in its design. I did not realize the first film did so well to warrant a sequel, and it only builds on the problems that first film had. If you find jump scares to be a perfect time at the cinema, by all means, go see this. I will not stop you. But if you want to be scared to your core, this will not come anywhere near doing that.
