Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

THE WOMAN IN BLACK (no spoilers)

25 views
Skip to first unread message

moviePig

unread,
May 22, 2012, 11:39:27 PM5/22/12
to


To longtime horror fans, a Hammer Films production brings to mind
heaving Victorian bosoms languishing beneath fangs gliding from a
lunar-lit mist. As the new face of Hammer, however, THE WOMAN IN
BLACK delivers a rather straightforward Victorian ghost story. Its
chief box-office asset is Daniel 'Hogwarts' Radcliffe, playing a young
widower -- a character that's, unusually, older than than the actor,
but Radcliffe pulls it off. Also, this is a visually sumptuous flick
(even on dvd) that nicely weaves mood and shocks. What comes up
surprisingly short, though, is a thin plot that resembles some
outdated short story rather than its actual modern novel. Scarier
than the 'PG-13' rating might suggest, but, even from this horror
hound, it's only mostly recommended.

--

- - - - - - - -
YOUR taste at work...
http://www.moviepig.com

nick

unread,
May 23, 2012, 5:14:29 PM5/23/12
to
On May 22, 11:39 pm, moviePig <pwall...@moviepig.com> wrote:
> To longtime horror fans, a Hammer Films production brings to mind
> heaving Victorian bosoms languishing beneath fangs gliding from a
> lunar-lit mist.  As the new face of Hammer, however, THE WOMAN IN
> BLACK delivers a rather straightforward Victorian ghost story.  Its
> chief box-office asset is Daniel 'Hogwarts' Radcliffe, playing a young
> widower -- a character that's, unusually, older than than the actor,
> but Radcliffe pulls it off.  Also, this is a visually sumptuous flick
> (even on dvd) that nicely weaves mood and shocks.  What comes up
> surprisingly short, though, is a thin plot that resembles some
> outdated short story rather than its actual modern novel.

But the original novel is more of an outdated short story than it is a
novel anyway, and it's that way intentionally. As an adaptation of an
existing work, I'd say The Woman in Black is pretty succesful. The
ending, different from the novel, is perhaops dodgy and maybe that's
because it owes more to J-horror tropes than Victorian era
conventions. The author of the novel said she didn't much care for
the ending either but it was the best they could manage after
struggling with it.

But this is PC-era Hammer isn't it? No heaving Victorian bosoms but
no stakes between those heaving Victorian bosoms either, so if nothing
else The Woman in Black manages to avoid the leering and very British
mix of bawdiness and barely repressed sexual hostility the Hammer
films trafficked in, much to Jess Franco's dismay.

wlah...@gmail.com

unread,
May 23, 2012, 5:21:25 PM5/23/12
to
I saw the 1989 BBC production recently and liked it a lot and this stuff is a tad off my beaten path. Have you seen it and is this movie an improvement?

moviePig

unread,
May 23, 2012, 5:31:23 PM5/23/12
to
Did/had you read the book? I haven't, but did google (unsuccessfully)
for an alternate ending to the movie. What is it and/or where can I
find it? The J-horror reference seems apt, because tWIB made me
think, quite spontaneously, of THE RING. (Btw, maybe another
difference between old and new Hammer is that, here, the monster was
*least* scary in closeup.)

moviePig

unread,
May 23, 2012, 5:35:39 PM5/23/12
to
It's wait listed at my library... (and I now wish I'd thought to get
in the queue earlier...)

nick

unread,
May 23, 2012, 5:38:19 PM5/23/12
to
On May 23, 5:21 pm, wlahe...@gmail.com wrote:
Is the BBC production currently available anywhere right now? Last I
read it was commanding jacked up prices on eBay and that was about
it. I'm assuming it was being repressed for the duration of the
remake's initial run.

nick

unread,
May 23, 2012, 5:42:25 PM5/23/12
to
An alternate ending to the film? According to the author of the
novel, Susan Hill, there were about five they were playing around
with. I read the novel soon after the film came out, for no other
reason than I was going through a fallow spell on the reading end of
the things and I wanted to read something short and simple to jolt me
out of my literacy stupor. I read it in conjunction with a re-reading
of "The Turn of the Screw" which led me to the Michael Winner
"prequel" The Nightcomers, a film I wouldn't much recommend.

moviePig

unread,
May 23, 2012, 11:07:41 PM5/23/12
to
(Historical note: I think Michael Winner may have been the first
director whose name I was actively disappointed to see in a movie's
top-credits.)

wlah...@gmail.com

unread,
May 23, 2012, 11:20:23 PM5/23/12
to
On Wednesday, May 23, 2012 11:07:41 PM UTC-4, moviePig wrote:
>
> (Historical note: I think Michael Winner may have been the first
> director whose name I was actively disappointed to see in a movie's
> top-credits.)
>
When I saw his version of "The Big Sleep" I wanted to go to his house and break several windows. My god he's dreadful.

moviePig

unread,
May 23, 2012, 11:27:22 PM5/23/12
to
Iirc and imo, he had one... um... winner, DEATH WISH. And, Charles
Bronson notwithstanding, even that success had mostly to do with the
script's then-ballsy premise.

Scott

unread,
May 25, 2012, 12:49:00 PM5/25/12
to
As a not-very-hardened horror fan, I found tWIB to be quite effective,
with a few very spooky scenes and a couple of good jumps. However,
having read the book a couple years ago, I was quite disappointed in
the ending. I thought the book's treatment much more emotive.

It was nice to see a good Hammer film again. Your references to heaving
Victorian bosoms, etc, were delightful. I must say though, my Hammer
tastes tended toward the sci-fi end of its output; e.g. X:The Unknown,
Quatermass and the Pit. Having said that, I could never pass up a
Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing pairing.

Bill Anderson

unread,
Jun 20, 2012, 9:47:49 PM6/20/12
to
Well, Netflix delivered the Blu-Ray today and I just watched it. I do
like an old dark house ghost story and I gotta admit this one had one or
two shivery moments and an especially delicious neck-to-arms-to-legs
chill-bump shock which I liked very much. But all in all, viewed as a
whole, start to finish, everything taken into account, especially
considering the entire over-the-top ending sequence from house to
graveyard to town, I gotta say ... meh.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

wlah...@gmail.com

unread,
Dec 12, 2012, 7:58:22 PM12/12/12
to
On Tuesday, May 22, 2012 11:39:27 PM UTC-4, moviePig wrote:

Good point about the short story but isn't that typical of the genre? For example, "The Uninvited" has an ever slimmer plot yet holds up far better. Even the original to this treated the story better although the ending was a bit tacked on. Here, we have sentiment and reconciliation as the resolution and the resolution is the supposed pay-off of sitting through such familiar territory CGI-ed up the wahzoo. It is, for the most part, a really good production. Yet, in pursuit of what? So you end up with a well-dressed ghost story with nowhere to go. And that's exactly where it gets to. "Only mostly" indeed, sir. I quite agree.

moviePig

unread,
Dec 12, 2012, 9:36:41 PM12/12/12
to
...and if you force comparison to THE UNINVITED, 'mostly' becomes
'moderately'.

Bill Anderson

unread,
Dec 12, 2012, 10:21:19 PM12/12/12
to
Hope everybody noticed *BIG SPOILER* in the subject line. Now here's my
question:

Do either of you think the woman in black did a good deed by murdering
Radcliffe and his kid? Was that what I was supposed too take away from
the film?

wlah...@gmail.com

unread,
Dec 12, 2012, 10:30:35 PM12/12/12
to
On Wednesday, December 12, 2012 10:21:19 PM UTC-5, Bill Anderson wrote:

> Hope everybody noticed *BIG SPOILER* in the subject line. Now here's my
> question:
>
> Do either of you think the woman in black did a good deed by murdering
> Radcliffe and his kid? Was that what I was supposed too take away from
> the film?
>
A bucket of sentimental gruel and no you can't have s'more. There seems to be an undercurrent of grief to these kinds of films, eg, "The Changeling" and the new ending to this old story plays on that in that Radcliffe, the child and the mother are reunited in some sick afterlife way. The take-away is the weeps interrupted by awwwws.

moviePig

unread,
Dec 12, 2012, 10:33:03 PM12/12/12
to
I had to revisit the plot via Wiki to remind me what I'd thought, so
beware, but... iirc, I received it as not an intentional good deed but
rather a dark cloud with a pewter lining.

Bill Anderson

unread,
Dec 12, 2012, 10:40:30 PM12/12/12
to
But I didn't weep and I didn't awwww. I basically didn't know what to
make of it there at the end, and even more basically didn't care. I do
remember seeing this movie. Yep, I definitely saw it. And I did wonder
whether I was supposed to be horrified or gratified by what the woman in
black did. And even now unto this very day yea verily I don't care.

Bill Anderson

unread,
Dec 12, 2012, 10:46:36 PM12/12/12
to
Like you, tonight I had to Google the ending to fill in the details of
what I remembered only as dissatisfaction. My honest guess is that the
filmmakers intended to convey horror at the evil actions of the woman in
black, but they failed and instead conveyed only ambiguity.

wlah...@gmail.com

unread,
Dec 12, 2012, 11:06:05 PM12/12/12
to
On Wednesday, December 12, 2012 10:40:30 PM UTC-5, Bill Anderson wrote:

> And even now unto this very day yea verily I don't care.
>
Me either.

trotsky

unread,
Dec 13, 2012, 6:44:46 AM12/13/12
to
Are you saying william's response invites comparison to "The Uninvited"?
I thought he was quite well behaved this time.

moviePig

unread,
Dec 13, 2012, 10:31:42 AM12/13/12
to
I can piggyback on William's thought that they just wanted to milk a
little extra poignance, and we could then suppose that the horror is
made more comfortable, and thus more seductive, and thus more
horrible. But, for me, it was mainly just more romantic. I stick
with the production values here.

Scott

unread,
Dec 14, 2012, 9:01:35 AM12/14/12
to
The ending of the movie differed from that of the book. The ending of
the book moved me. The movie did not...
0 new messages