The Woman in Black is a shocker!

[devonian.t]

Posted: 2/12/12 at 3:28pm

SPOILERS
Now, I totally get that a film has to be different beast from either a novel or a play, but Jane Goldman's adaptation seem to have about as much sense of the right direction as Kekwick's horse and cart!

Both earlier incarnations paint a plausible picture of people traumatized by terrible loss, and baffled by things nobody in their right mind would understand. The inhabitants of Crythen Gifford have been teerified into submission and silence, knowing full well that no outsider would ever believe their plight.

So one of the key new plot developments in the film has the angry peasants virtually lynching Arthur Kipps and blaming him for their tragedies. Well, first off, if they were that militant they would have burnt down Eel Marsh House and called in an exorcist long before. Secondly, they have lived with the horror for years- they know Kipps has not brought it on them.

In the same way, the psychological portrait of Jeanette is rushed, failing to show that she was an unmarried mother, cruelly parted from her child, gradually wasting away to become the hideous apparition. In the film, though we know her child was adopted, there is much less care with her back-story.

Similarly, the exposition of Daily's and Jerome's tragedies seem muddled and the ordering of events seems disjointed- there is a real difficulty sustaining tension when the location dots around from the village to Daily's, to the haunted house. Every time tension is starting to build, we are off to a new place. And Daily's car, though necessary for the ending, lacks the echo of the tragic pony and trap, which is a terrifying motif in the book and play.

MAJOR SPOILERS
Worst of all is the new "improved" ending. So many contrivances pile on top of each other that the whole thing verges on the farcical. Isn't it handy that Daily's old car can gain enough traction on a causeway to pull up the cart? Oh, and the body has just been there on the carriage all that time. And Kipps can find it after 2 quick dips- something nobody had managed before. Even though the had managed to erect A BLOODY GREAT CROSS in the quicksand!!!

The exorcism is muddled- everything seems to suggest that Jeanette will "never forgive".

Yet following the station accident- regardless of the fact that Kipps has done everything to safeguard his son, he casually lets go of his hand on the platform- Kipps and son are happily reunited with dead mother. So is this meant to be a punishment from a woman who will never forgive? Cos it seems to have backfired. He final malicious glare suggests that she wasn't being kind, so what a****up- surely it would have been more cruel to make Kipps live a long, miserable, grief-stricken life?

So, though the art direction is suitably bleached, the house is genuinely dark and creepy, virtually all the scares are of the "boo!" variety, and the psychological horror of both novel and play are nowhere to be seen. In what way could you leave the film reflecting on the horror of a life lived, concealing a terrible grief?

The stage show is a modern classic. The film is an insubstantial, silly Hammer movie. What an under-achievement.

Worst of all,

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 2/13/12 at 9:01am

Yeah it's not the best, i had to separate my love of the play/book from the film, i did enjoy the film for what it is and i thought Radcliffe was great, but it could have been so much more.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 2/13/12 at 9:17am

Agree, still scared the life out of me!
Bloody rocking chairs, china dolls and bloody monkeys!

[devonian.t]

Posted: 2/13/12 at 1:10pm

Oh, and 2 other things- Daniel R NEVER shaved- even for a formal dinner at they Daleys' house. Really?

And though I am willing to accept that Kipps might eventually address Daley as Sam- though it's unlikely- he would NEVER introduce his son that way. Children would never address an adult on first name terms! Sloppy!