Today's Review: The Woman in Black: Angel of Death

Finally wrote another review. Yes, it's been a while. More to come soon though!

The Woman in Black: Angel of Death - recensie

Not a very inspired sequel to an otherwise effective and stylish predecessor. It wasn't the actors, it wasn't the atmosphere, it wasn't even really the story that made it a rather boring watch devoid of real scares. It was simply the running out of gags, recycling the scare tactics applied in the first film, with nothing new to creep the bejeesus out of us added to the mix. That's usually the curse of these horror sequels: you know what shenanigans the evil portrayed in these films is up to and how it goes around attempting to frighten us, the spectators, while they are doing it. You can change settings, but not the nature and established tricks of the evil itself. Take Jason Voorhees for example: even transplanted to a spaceship in the distant future he was basically up to his same old bloody slashing routines. There's only so much you can do with your typical horror monsters, without inventing a new set of rules, which is often viewed (and not wholly incorrectly so) as a blatant cop-out, illogical in terms of narrative compared to the events of the previous film(s). There's simply not much more to a ticked-off ghost lady with a fetish for driving innocent children to suicide than the first film displayed and this second film regurgitated. Angel of Death certainly has proven the limits of the angry spectre's effectiveness to scare us. No need to prove it again with a third Woman in Black film, I'd say. But if this second movie makes money, that's very likely exactly what will happen.

Today's News: business as usual

It's been a slow second half of the week for posting movie news. Good thing too, it won't cause me to get behind again:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/157681/nieuwe_john_carter_in_de_planning

I had hoped for this, so I'm glad the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs isn't letting a second John Carter of Mars movie gestate for another 70 years. I was really disappointed Disney's John Carter flopped so hard at the boxoffice. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but it was a damn fun movie with great visuals and it had solid franchise potential. Maybe I liked it more than I should, but subject material like this - strange aliens, exotic alien worlds, sexy alien chicks, etc. - really is my cup of tea, always has been. Granted, the movie made its fair share of mistakes both in terms of development, narrative and marketing, but in my mind it truly deserved a better fate. And so ERB, Inc. thinks, too. The original books were groundbreaking, swashbuckling rollercoasters of adventure novels that have endured for many decades, so there must still be an audience for them somewhere. No harm in trying again, starting from scratch, maybe not spending such excessive amounts of money on them this time. I'm really hopeful the company can find a new partner, a studio that still feels there's room for old fashioned Sci-Fi adventures like these. At least this time they know what not to do to make it work. Though it would make sense for both the estate and the studio to wait a little longer, after Jupiter Ascending and Star Wars Episode VII have hit theaters, so they can see whether there's still an audience for grandiose space opera in the ERB tradition.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/157701/nieuwe_trailer_the_woman_in_black_2

Seems like more of the same. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, as the first Woman in Black was quite a decent horror flick with its wonderfully creepy and moody period look. Trading in a late Victorian style for a WW II era visual look is not a bad thing. From a story point of view, it makes sense as to why people would allow kids to visit that horribly haunted house again. It seems a better place for children to be than a bombed-out London, any regular parent would think. City folks don't believe in countryside ghost stories after all. And not having Daniel Radcliffe as the protagonist is probably a good notion too. His post-Potter presence in the previous part tended to overshadow the movie as having its own identity. The Woman in Black is still commonly referred to as 'that spooky film featuring Harry Potter', and I don't think that does it any justice at all. Then again, the second installment stars Potter's Narcissa Malfoy, for those who weren't aware. Hopefully it doesn't mean the movie will soon be acknowledged as 'that spooky movie starring Draco's mum'. That is, if Angel of Death turns out as decent a scary movie (or more so) as its predecessor. Otherwise, I couldn't really care less anyway.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/157700/_bale_speelt_steve_jobs_in_boyles_biopic

Another Steve Jobs biopic? There was one in theaters only a year ago. Than one, however, didn't win much favour with audience or critics with its rather bland and straightforward approach. Nor are its director and main star (Ashton Kutcher, if you recall) considered such bankable talents as Christian Bale and Danny Boyle. So yeah, why not make another? There's still plenty to tell about so inspiring and innovative a man, no doubt. Plus, there's better storytellers available, and Boyle sure is an intriguing choice. I don't mind Bale, though he tends to go a little too far in his acting, reminding you that you're not watching the character he plays, but that you're seeing Bale doing his extreme thing again. The script is in the capable hands of Aaron Sorkin, who seems to be in danger of being typecast as the screenwriter for penning biopics about important folks in the digital industry for hugely talented directors (he also did The Social Network, after all). You think we'll get multiple Bill Gates motion pictures when that Microsoft man logs out of this life? If so, Sorkin is likely to be Hollywood's go-to guy to pen a script about Gates' life.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/157709/jesse_eisenberg_in_dcs_suicide_squad

Hopefully poor Jesse Eisenberg fully realized what he got himself into before signing on as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Considering DC's overly ambitious plans for its own cinematic universe - clearly copying Marvel's designs, but still - it would be natural for a bad guy of Luthor's stature to appear in multiple DC movies soon. Luthor, after all, has his greedy conniving arms wrapped aroud a lot of shady businesses in the DC comics, and has had them there for decades. The movie version is expected to be just as busy controlling an evil empire, one that's not restricted to simply plaguing his nemesis Superman, but many of his fellow heroes as well. Right now the most apt comparable character available in the Marvel Cinematic Universe villain would be Loki, who also started out the archenemy of one but soon demanded a bigger piece of the superhero pie. Luthor is likely to do the same. Nevertheless, his skills would make him more of an evil Nick Fury, controlling strings of a lot of other baddies behind the scenes, as Fury does with good guys (or what he considers to be such, at least). In this case, it seems he's the guy responsible for forming the supervillain team called Suicide Squad, soon to give the Justice League a hard time. I wouldn't be surprised to see him, and thus Eisenberg, make regular appearances, both minor and major, in many upcoming DC movies. And I'm sure Eisenberg won't particularly mind, it just keeps him occupied while the pay checks keep coming in at a steady flow.

Today's News: lots o' trailers mostly

The latest crop of news of the past few days consists of mostly trailer material:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156970/nieuwe_trailer_serie_gotham

Seems somebody was inspired by Nolan's seminal Dark Knight trilogy. The whole look of this show, based on the trailers so far, screams Nolan in its display of realistic psychopaths and criminals and dark steel and glass canyons. No trace of the more outlandish, fantastic elements of Batman lore. Considering it's an origin show that can still come of course. You've got to show the everyday people behind these heroes and demons before going overboard with any otherwordly shenanigans they might offer. So for the time being, the villains to be set up will dabble in the more commonplace criminal enterprises instead of revealing their odd personality quirks out loud. I doubt we'll be seeing Poison Ivy controlling plant life with pheromones anytime soon, which is probably for the better. It seems that at the heart of the story remains young Bruce Wayne's loss of his parents and honest cop Inspector Gordon's subsequent quest to apprehend their killer, which forms a personal bond between the two of them based around their need for justice. That's as Batman as they come without introducing the alter ego of the Caped Crusader. It's also a basic element of the Batman make-up that the Dark Knight movies kinda raced through, which does make the show stand out more on its own. Question is, will Gordon catch the murderer, or will he fail at that, which makes the urgency for young Bruce feel all the more pressing? And how do all these token Batman villains, like Catwoman, Penguin and Riddler fit into the grand scheme of things? Despite the copycat style, still a lot to look forward to.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156979/eerste_trailer_outcast

Another medieval Sword & Sorcery flick starring Nicolas Cage as a wethered ex-crusader? Been there, done that, didn't work out so great before. It seems Outcast's plot just trades in the creepy witches and demons from Season of the Witch for angry Chinese overlords and royal family squabbles. And instead of Ron 'Hellboy' Perlman for a sidekick, we get Hayden 'whiny Anakin' Christensen. Also not much of an improvement. Cage's fondness of silly wigs remains, so at least there's some consistency to his career. The entire thing seems like a B-movie with a minute plot based around a string of action scenes, which is to be expected from a movie directed by a first-time director who usually deals with coordinating stunts only; though he has an impressive resumé in that department, no doubt there. Chances are that means the action scenes will be executed rather adequately, which seems like the least we should hope for in this film's case.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156980/eerste_teaser_woman_in_black_2_

The popular trend of giving succesful horror films a sequel of sorts that doesn't feature any of the characters from the previous installment continues, whether we like it or not. The Woman in Black was a very effective chiller, but its ending seemed fairly definitive, even though it was established that exorcising the vengeful spirit from the title didn't work. That's enough for any studio hungry to cash in on decent box office results (can't imagine they were stellar or anything), so the murderous ghost will soon be at it again. Hammer Studios has a history of fondly remembered horror movies and their many follow-ups, and in a way it's reassuring to know the recently revamped horror specialist studio isn't afraid to use its tactics of old. Do we want a second Woman in Black? Not particularly, but I'm all for period movies with Gothic looks. Hammer has always had a knack for those and the 21st Century seems no different for them in that regard. The premise isn't so bad either. Snotty kids evacuated from WW II London are relocated to a creepy countryside mansion, and instead of finding a delightful fantasy world in the cupboard they encounter a sinister spirit hellbent on enticing them to suicide there. Basically sounds like an evil Narnia, so what's not to like?

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156982/weaver_niet_in_expendabelles

This is quite a setback for the ExpendaBelles project. If you consider old grunts like Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose primary decade of fame and fortune was the Eighties, as the prime action movie stars of their day, Sigourney Waver was their definite female counterpart, thanks to the first two Alien movies - groundbreaking pictures in that regard - and Ghostbusters. There's not that many well remembered powerful older action gals around that remain as active as she is. Terminator's Linda Hamilton maybe? What has she been up to since then? For any other similar femme fatales, you'd have to look for more recent fare. Weaver would have been the project's greatest asset in iterms of casting, so who could fill her shoes now? Sure, there's plenty of grand dames of the cinema who could, but not that many with a memorable action movie background that would warrant their presence. It just goes to show how rare such roles were for females back then. Which made this female equivalent of The Expendables a risky venture to begin with, as there was always a realistic chance those few girl power women of old would turn down a part. Considering The Expendables 3 is not doing so well at the boxoffice - to say the least! - maybe it's a clear signal there's no particular public demand for this type of film at present. However, it's the female bits (no pun intended) that would have made the difference here, and I was quite intrigued as to how that would play out. It would have been great to see theatres hosting a Ladies' Night that doesn't feature a typical romantic comedy for a change. Guess that's gonna take a while longer to transpire, if it doesn't fall through at all.

Daniel Radcliffe gets scared shitless

The Woman in Black:

****/*****, or 7/10

It seems Hammer Studios is back with a vengeance. The once grand British motion picture company with its proud history of producing eerie, creepy and successful horror movies from the Fifties till the Seventies, more or less disappeared in the Eighties, but has recently been revived, thanks to Dutch producer John de Mol. It has now continued its tradition of producing suspenseful thrillers and horror films, so far with mixed success. While Let Me In, the English spoken remake of the superb Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In, proved a thoughtful and surprisingly restrained movie that respected its European predecessor, the following voyeur thriller The Resident was less of a success, maligned by critics and underwhelming audiences. Hammer now returns to the roots of its former fame, the Gothic horror film, which in the previous century helped the studio establish its well earned name as a leading House of Horror in the film industry – like Universal Pictures used to be in the Thirties and Fourties – thanks to their classic takes on Dracula and Frankenstein, not to mention the production of dozens of other monster movies. Hammer's latest entry in the game, The Woman in Black, fits in perfectly in its long record of producing quality horror movies that are based mostly on atmosphere and suspense, instead of the more typical blood and gore that have become common place in the genre in the last decade.

And thank heaven for that! With the success of Saw back in 2004, the horror genre has been dominated by utter gore fests ever since, driven only by carnage and splatter to “thrill” its audiences, though few of them were genuinely scary: it was largely based on the levels of disgust triggered in spectators than on actually spooking them. And even though the first Saw featured an ingenious and well crafted suspenseful plot, none of its many sequels or its numerous copycats, the likes of Hostel and My Bloody Valentine, seemed to care about plot too much, but were driven only by the urge to freak viewers out by showcasing ever more original and messy ways of cutting victims up, even in 3D. The horror genre, at least in the USA, seemed to slip into full decline and was reduced largely to simple 'torture porn'. It took some films from Japan and Europe, including the aforementioned Let the Right One In, to demonstrate horror really benefited from a more subtle approach to things to acquire acclaim and scared audiences. At this point the genre seems to swing back to the more traditional style of disturbing people, using suggestion and shadows as its main tactics, as indicated by the success of the Paranormal Activity series and recent films like Don't be Afraid of the Dark. Hammer Studios, once a master of creating tense laden films in this way, does the right thing to completely ignore the goryness of last decade's horror films, and continue to do what it did before by reestablishing the gothic horror movie, as evidenced by The Woman in Black, directed by James Watkins, who previously directed the shocking Eden Lake, an earlier recent exception to the still dominant rule of gore run horror flicks. Though only his second job in the director's chair, Eden Lake alone has established him as fully capable of heading an extremely chilling and uncomfortable horror movie, so it's perfectly understandable Hammer felt him to be a right man for directing this particular film.

Set in the Edwardian era, the film introduces London solicitor Arthur Kipps (played by Daniel Radcliffe), a young widower who recently lost his wife in childbirth, leaving him alone with his son, now four years old. Due to financial problems, Arthur is forced by his law firm to take a case in a small English village near the coast, handling the estate of a deceased woman who owned a splendid manor, the Eel Marsh House, on a small island near the town. Leaving his son behind, with the intention of him and his nanny joining him on the countryside for the weekend, Kipps departs. Upon his arrival in the village, Kipps finds out the locals are less than friendly or welcoming, and would much prefer him to leave town immediately, which of course he does not. Only the rich landowner Sam Daily (performed by the always thoroughly reliable and impeccable Ciaran Hinds), who himself is a bit of an outsider in the village, proves amicable towards him, having suffered a personal loss of his own when his son died, which left his wife in a mentally unhinged state, which she claims is her dead son visiting her. Kipps journeys to Eel Marsh House, a totally sinister and creepy place which you would have a hard time believing not to be haunted, but Kipps doesn't, though he does hear all kinds of eerie sounds and sees a woman dressed in black staring at him on several occassions. Upon returning to the town he is confronted with a little girl having swallowed lye and dying in his arms. He's now met with open hostility, when it is revealed to him that seeing the woman in black means local children will commit suicide afterwards, as he just dramatically witnessed. Still refusing to leave, Kipps stays to complete his job while investigating the ghostly apparition further. He discovers the woman in black is the ghost of a mentally unstable woman who once lived in Eel Marsh House with her son, who was taken away from her and raised by her sister only to die in her custody, after which his real mother hung herself. Now she takes other people's children by manipulating them to their deaths. Mrs. Daily informs Kipps his son, who will be in town in a short while, is next and so he convinces himself he must find a way to appease the spirit somehow before his son is taken by her too.

So there you have it: a more refined horror story, without any need for overly graphic gutting or splitting people's bodies revealing their inner anatomy in much more detail than most sensible people would ever want to see it. The Woman in Black resorts to the more trite and true ways of creeping people out, spooking them with effective use of shadows, eerie sound FX at otherwise quiet moments, illogically moving furniture and Radcliffe looking generally at ill ease, which he does well enough considering his still somewhat limited experience in the field of acting. As a whole, he carries the movie adequately, though his character seems stupendously naive and Radcliffe himself is definitely still too young to convincingly pull off a mourning widower aged around 25 years old. However, his known stardom is not detracting enough to ever really get into the way of the film's overall progression. You know him for sure, but you don't care enough about knowing him from other works to let it fully cloud your viewing experience. There's hope for Radcliffe's further career yet. He's obviously no match for the talented Hinds who's proven to be a very capable actor time and again, most fondly remembered for his role as Caesar in HBO's TV series Rome. The veteran actor delivers a more credible and natural performance, but of course he doesn't need to carry the picture like his younger colleague does. The two of them work well together (again), and though Hinds is clearly the better actor he, nor any of the other actors/actresses, doesn't steal the scenes they share, which would also have felt wrong.

The film's main attraction, aside from the expected and effective scares of course, lies in its visuals. The movie feels like a genuine period piece set in the early 1900s, with delicious costume and art design to match, as well as a wonderful old Rolls Royce car thrown in to make it feel even more authentic. The misty, murky environment of Eel Marsh already has a nightmarish feel to it, which is only completed by the abandoned and decaying Gothic mansion and its plethora of insufficiently lit nooks and crannies, ancient furniture, dark corridors and stately rooms, and a large collection of incredibly unsettling toys no parent in their right mind would ever let near their kid. Watkins uses this brooding atmosphere to great effect with simple ideas like chairs seemingly moving on their own accord, toys playing by themselves and a distorted woman's face just randomly appearing here and there. Of course such tricks have been text book scary scenarios for many decades (also thanks to Hammer Studios), but in this film they work surprisingly well regardless: it's as it the numbing effect of watching so much torture porn in the last few years has made us totally forget said tricks, with The Woman in Black now re-introducing us to their spooky effect. And in this case it's really just scares it triggers, instead of actully feeling disgusted, which is a nice change our bodies will also welcome. The opening sequence alone, in which three little girls are just playing with their dolls, only to look off-screen, walk to the window and jump out together, after which we hear the terrified shrieks of their mother, without ever leaving the room or seeing the result of the girls' actions, is enough to make us feel really chilled to the bone instead of sickened and nauseated through and through: all achieved by a simple combination of subtle camera work, sound and suggestion.

The Woman in Black is Hammer's definite return to old school form, showing audiences that the ancient tricks still work best when applied by a capable director to truly scary effect. Though the lead actor's performance is not exactly of the highest quality, it's sufficient to draw you into the mood the film wants you to be in to frighten you successfully. In terms of story it may not be the most original work, despite its ending which is undecidedly happy or in fact the complete opposite, but it delivers much in terms of atmosphere and completely achieves what it sets up to do: shock the shit out of you for about ninety minutes. A welcome reprieve from the overabundance of gore filled genre films of the last few years, and hopefully it will put the horror genre back on the right path again.

And I managed to write this whole review without ever mentioning Harry Potter at all... oh, damn...!

And watch the trailer here:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/thewomaninblack/