Halloween Horrorfest: The Woman in Black 2

If there was ever a movie that didn't really need a sequel, it would be The Woman in Black. There really wasn't much left to explore after the original film after the entire mystery of Eel Marsh house and it's resident vengeful ghost were revealed. But, at least they came up with an intriguing premise for it. Now if only it had been executed better. 

The film picks up 40 years after the first film as Eve Perkins (played by Phoebe Fox) a school deputy headmistress accompanies a group of schoolchildren as well as the Headmistress (played by Helen McCrory) to the English countryside to escape the London bombings of WWII. They wind up taking refuge in the Eel Marsh house and in the process re-awakening the house's titular ghost. The ghost in particular takes an interest in the recently orphaned Edward (played by Oaklee Pendergast), who doesn't talk and communicates by writing on scraps of notebook paper. Meanwhile, Eve meets a dashing air force pilot Harry (played by Jeremy Irvine), who is stationed at a near by airstrip and promises to stop by from time to time to check on them. Soon, as strange disturbances begin to occur and kids begin disappearing from their beds, the two of them team up to figure out what is going on. 

I was rather disappointed in The Woman in Black 2. The first film was a fantastic scary movie that knew just how to ratchet up the tension in any given scene where as this one just falls flat. The film has a great premise, a group of kids and their chaperones leave London to escape the bombings only to unwittingly take residence in an old house haunted by a vengeful ghost that leads children to their death (I can just imagine the parents if they knew where their kids were headed, "Uh, yeah, no thanks. We'll take our chances with the heavy artillery."). The problem is there is no sense of tension or eerieness anywhere to be found in the film. There are plenty of cheap jump scares littered throughout the film and those just got annoying after awhile. The film's two leads, Phoebe Fox and Jeremy Irvine, give decent performances and have a nice chemistry with one another. Both their characters have dark pasts that they are haunted by. I wish the film could have found a way to make the current events play in with that a bit more rather than relying on the same tired tropes of every other haunted house film. I also appreciated that they gave the Headmistress more depth and didn't make her a one dimensional disciplinarian monster as it would have been so easy to do. But none of it comes together in any sort of satisfying or genuinely scary way. 

Overall, The Woman in Black 2 is a disappointing and probably unnecessary sequel. It doesn't succeed in recreating the tension or suspense of the original film, leaving this one rather flat and not even the lovely eye candy of Jeremy Irvine could save it for me. And considering some of the dreck I've sat through because there was a cute guy in it, that's saying something.