13 Nights of Shocktober: The Woman in Black

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 7: Hammer Horror Night, “There are those who believe the whole town is cursed/But the house in the marsh is by far the worst.”

The Woman In Black 

The Woman in Black is a film I’ve been wanting to see for a while, but I was hesitant because it was released in theaters in February, which is notoriously a dumping ground for bad and mediocre films. However, it did well at the box office and since then it has been a popular rental every October at the video store where I work,  Vulcan Video. The Woman in Black is also rated PG-13, which horror movie fans will tell you usually indicates a tepid, unfrightening movie. There are exceptions to every rule and The Woman in Black can join the small club of good, scary PG-13 horror movies. 

The Woman in Black was produced by the recently revived Hammer Films and it is a fine, solid entry in the Hammer filmography. Hammer Films is a British production company best known for its horror films of the 1950s and 60s that were shot in Technicolor, typically had Gothic settings, and had violence and special effects more graphic than had been seen in horror films up to that point. Like many of the classic Hammer horror films, The Woman in Black has a period setting and relies on mainly on mood and atmosphere to transport the audience to a world of supernatural horrors, but still casts great British actors to fill out the cast.

Daniel Radcliffe stars as Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer in Edwardian era England who travels to a remote, gloomy village to collect the papers of a recently deceased client. This is Radcliffe’s first post-Harry Potter role and seeing him as someone other than the iconic Harry Potter is easier than you think. Radcliffe has grown into a fine actor and gives a good performance, though there is not much to do with this character. That is not a big problem, however, because this film knows the real star is its mood and atmosphere, which is thick and dreary. Fog and mist float though several scenes. The period setting (the clothes, the old cars, and candlelight) only strengthen the eerie, spooky feel of the movie.

Kipps finds himself staying in the decaying, ominous mansion of his dead client which is on an island accessible only by a road on a sandbar at low tide. The mansion in the marsh is exactly what you hope to see in a haunted house. In addition to being on an island in a marsh, the house is next to a graveyard. The production design of the house itself is incredible. It has long hallways and rooms filled with creepy antiques and dusty old toys. The scenes of Kipps alone in the mansion are the scariest because of the sound design. The best and most frightening sequence in the movie has Kipps being tormented late at night by creepy, unexplainable sounds and flickering ghostly visions. When we finally see her, the woman in black herself is very scary and creepy. There are some CGI effects which is only to be expected in any effects movie made in the 21^st century, but The Woman in Black relies most on shadows and whispers to scare us.

Kipps is determined to stay and complete his job as his future at his law firm depends on it and he has a young son to support all on his own; his wife died in childbirth. The locals all want him to leave because the house in the marsh is haunted by a sinister spirit whose apparition signals the death of a child. After village children begin suffering tragic accidents, Kipps begins to investigate the identity of the spirit and the history of the mansion in the marsh.

With its ending, The Woman in Black manages to have its cake and eat it too. It moves towards a logical, satisfying ending but still feels compelled to give us the obligatory “final scare” that typically ruins most horror movies. This movie manages to have a final scare, but also have a satisfying, yet somber ending. If you watch a lot of horror movies, there are scenes you know are going to happen because they are practically required in a scary movies, but even these moments are well done. There is some great macabre imagery, but no gore and nothing too intense for more skittish viewers. This is a fine example of a movie being scary without being violent, or dark, or cynical.