The Woman in Black: Angel of Death

Year of Release:  2014

Director:  Tom Harper

Screenplay:  Jon Croker, from a story by Susan Hill

Starring:  Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine, Helen McCrory, Adrian Rawlins, Leanne Best, Ned Dennehy, Oaklee Pendergast

Running Time:  98 minutes

Genre:  Horror

England, 1941: The second year of the Second World War and London suffers under the Blitz, a heavy bombing campaign carried out by German planes.  Teachers Eve Parkins (Fox) and Jean Hogg (McCrory) evacuate a number of children from the city to the relative safety of the country.  They are billeted in the large decaying mansion known as Eel Marsh House, in the middle of a vast, desolate stretch of marshlands.  However, Eel Marsh House is haunted by the malevolent, ghostly "Woman in Black" (Best) who begins targeting the children, particularly the silent, traumatised Edward (Pendergast).

This is the sequel to the 2012 film The Woman in Black, but it has no connection to it's predecessor at all, aside from the titular Woman in Black and the setting of Eel Marsh House, in fact this film is set 40 years after the first.  However Susan Hill, the author of the original 1983 novel The Woman in Black, did work on the story for this sequel.  This is atmospheric enough but it's not really particularly scary at all.  There are a few effective jump scares, but there is nothing here that fans of ghost stories have not seen many times before. The performances are good, particularly from Phoebe Fox as the troubled teacher and Helen McCrory as the stern headteacher.  Jeremy Irvine has charisma as the dashing pilot, with, of course, a troubled past, who romances Eve.  Eel Marsh House is satisfactorily creepy and dismal, and the acres of flat misty marshland make for a bleak, gloomy location which works for the material, and, as so often happens in these films, all the colours look as if they have been washed out.  The Woman in Black herself doesn't really appear that much, but makes herself known in a few effective scenes.  It's not really a very bad film, it's just very predictable, unoriginal and really not very frightening.  Although it is very bleak, and the fact that the Woman in Black targets young children might be upsetting for some viewers. 

She's behind you:  The Woman in Black (Leanne Best) approaches Eve (Phoebe Fox) in The Woman in Black: Angel of Death