<Insert pathetic Harry Potter joke here, then jump off Niagara Falls in a flowerpot as an apology.>
The Woman In Black (2012) seems like a movie out of its era, at least to these modern eyes. Set in Edwardian or late Victorian England, young and probationary lawyer Arthur Kipps is sent by his employer to Crythin Gifford in England to process the estate of client Alice Drablow, lately deceased. Mourning the loss of his own wife in childbirth four years earlier, Kipps discovers a village that is standoffish, but not for the usual reasons, whatever they may be, but because the children of the village are dying.
In droves, I mean. And it’s all by, well, it appears inadvertent suicide. No, don’t walk in the train tracks. No, don’t drink lye.
But he has a job, and no matter how hard the villagers try, Eel Marsh House, late home of Alice Drablow and intoxicator of my Arts Editor, will be processed. So Kipps digs in and starts reading.
And hearing the noises.
And seeing the mysterious, disappearing figures. Indeed, we’re almost overrun by the haunted house tropes. In fact, I began to muse on how to flip them on their heads, just for fun.
And that’s the problem here. Each scene, for all its earnestness, for all its unconscious dedication to the art form of the earnestly haunted house, inspired not shivering or thoughtfulness, but straight lines.
“And this is Arthur Kipps, seen here extinguishing the very idea of humor in England,” as Stephen Colbert might intone.
The problem is that a haunted house story needs some sort of underlying theme, a Don’t ever do this moment, and … It. Doesn’t. Have. That.
And that lack leads the mind to wander.
Back to the story, and skipping a great deal of it, eventually Kipps’ four year old son comes a-visiting (“Hey! Make him bait!”), and soon we have the woman in black, as well as Arthur’s dead wife, at the rail station, but, too bad for her kid and still-living husband, she’s just useless in the protection racket, so terrible things keep on happening.
And, yes, the future is bleak for this little village. But moreso for a movie that is ultimately far too earnest for the current era, an era that demands cleverness and insight, and the haunted house genre, in earnest mode, just doesn’t seem to be up for it here.
If you want recently done effective horror, see Get Out (2017). Horror is not my gig at all, but I liked Get Out.
