The Woman in Black

What scares you? What makes you afraid to sleep at night or even close your eyes? What keeps you from looking in the corner of your eyes?

Fear of the unknown is a strong fear indeed.

Yesterday, my mother and younger sister went down to our $3 theater to see Daniel Radcliffe's first post-potter movie: The Woman in Black. The film was the scariest I've ever seen; I was clutching the arm rests and leaning back in my chair through a lot of it. I think I screamed three times and I ended up crying at the end.

Let me make a couple disclaimers, first, if you were even slightly creeped out or disturbed by my mafia stories, do not see this movie. Don't do it. You'll never sleep again. Second, if you are one who enjoys getting scared in a movie (like me) and decides to watch this one, do not watch it alone, especially at night. Third, if you are a frequent scary movie watcher--feel free to make fun of me, I'm a bit of a wimp. 

What follows is my personal thoughts and review of the film. I will keep the spoilers to a minimum, but some minor ones will worm their way in. You have been warned.

The movie opens with three little girls, sisters, playing with dolls and having a tea party. Suddenly they all get up and walk, in a trance, to the three windows in their attic room and drop down to the ground below. The viewer is left looking at the open windows and listening to the girls' mother screaming and sobbing. This is not going to be a happy movie.

The story is about a lawyer, Arthur Kipp, who must go to an old estate on the edge of a marsh, a marsh whose tide covers the road to the house sometimes, and sort through all the paperwork the diseased resident left behind. The town on the other side of the marsh is gloomy and depressed. The filmaking quality of this picture was excellent. Yet, it wasn't until Arthur got to the house that I started to get creeped out.

The walk to the house, shrouded in fog, was enough to make most people turn back. He passed a small cemetary in the woods before reaching the house with it's dead vines and broken down gates.

 

The pace of the film was slow, especially at first. The camera moved slowly, and as Arthur reached the house, we were given a shot of him from an upstairs window walking up the path; it was as though we were watching him from within the house, and we wondered who else was watching. The shadows prevailed in a time when electricity was not common. Candlelight and the sun coming in through the dust-covered windows gave us enough light to see, but not enough to dispell all the shadows.

This director knew how to shoot a creepy film. Arthur went exploring the house after hearing a sound or seeing something in the corner of his eye and the camera angles were close and tight as though we were Arthur, peering around the corners, trying to see what chose to remain hidden. Sometimes the pace was painstakingly slow because we were slowing moving toward something we wanted to run away from, and the fact that it took a long time to get where we did not want to go made it worse. A constant state of tension. That's how I would describe most of the movie. My sister called it "torture". When he was in the house, there was no rest for me. He would have several false alarms where he wouldn't see something, then the director would suddenly spring the face of the woman upon us, or we would see something at the end of hallway, or a sudden sound would reach our ears, or the music would suddenly climax and startle us as we were given a flash of the demonic spirit still in the house.

I rather enjoyed the film. My sister, mom, and I had the whole theater to ourselves so sometimes we talked, then shushed each other because we were ruining the moment. Ha! We were keeping ourselves from freaking out too much.  

Anyway, I enjoyed being scared by the movie, I didn't find the ending as satisfying as I would have liked, but upon reflection I decided that it was a rather fun movie, if scaring yourself more than you've ever been scared in your life can be called fun. :)

I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep that night, and part of it was due to the fear that the woman in black was standing over my bed. But then, as my mother always encouraged me to do, I carried my fear of the ghost to its logical conclusion: if there was a malevolent ghost standing over my bed, the worst thing it could do was kill me. If that happened, I'd be with Jesus. I don't fear death, in fact, I welcome it. Not in a suicidal way, but I look forward to death because of the wonderful promise of heaven. And so, with that note, I will end this post about ghosts with the hope of Jesus and heaven.