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Title: The Woman in Black (2012) Post by: akiratubo on June 09, 2012, 02:09:41 AM Daniel Radcliffe is a lawyer who travels to a remote village, during what looks like the 1910s. His job is to sort through the paperwork of an old, cursed house so that it can be sold. While doing so, he encounters every scary house movie cliche in the book, plus a few ghost child movie cliches just for good measure.
I honestly couldn't tell at any point whether The Woman in Black was a drearily unsuccessful attempt at serious horror or a brilliantly successful satire. The way it keeps so many hoary old cliches coming at a frantic and relentless clip is the same way the best Zucker/Abrams/Zucker comedies played out. I think the movie might be tipping its hand during one scene that is blatantly a ripoff of Exorcist II: The Heretic. There is no way in hell anyone would copy Exorcist II with a straight face. Most of the scares are jump scares of the "scary face pops up and screams" variety. But then there are some that bite deeper, like one poor man being confronted with the ghost of his long-dead little boy. Throughout the movie, the man has professed to be a devout Christian who has no doubt his little boy will be in Heaven waiting on him. Nope, his ghost is trapped in very unpleasant circumstances right here on earth, which means everything the poor man believes is a lie. Or, at least, that's what it would mean if the movie used the boy's ghost for anything but another jump scare. Just think of all they could have done with a grieving father meeting his son's ghost, but all they put on screen was: Quote *ghost boy pops up* Ghost Boy: Daddy! *man sees him* Man: Nicholas? *ghost boy disappears, man goes on as if nothing had happened* The ending is pretty good, though. A word of warning: if you harbor a fear of dolls, especially wind up dolls, DO NOT watch this movie. EDIT: Woops, I meant to put this in Good Movies. I don't think it's successful as a horror film, but it sure was entertaining. Title: Re: The Woman in Black (2012) Post by: indianasmith on June 09, 2012, 07:51:45 AM The cliches in this movie actually worked for me. I enjoyed it, for the most part.
Title: Re: The Woman in Black (2012) Post by: ChaosTheory on June 09, 2012, 11:09:46 AM The cliches in this movie actually worked for me. I enjoyed it, for the most part. Yeah, I had a similar reaction, to the ending anyway. I should have hated that but instead I thought, "eh, okay." This wasn't great but it was pretty all right. And yeah, those dolls were the scariest thing in the movie :buggedout: |