Horror sequel falls to earth
Film delivers all the right elements, but just misses with underwhelming climax
Ever since special effects technicians mastered the art of realistic gore, giving us believable scenes of everything from dismemberment to disembowelling, horror movies have slid down a slick blood-covered slope into the sub-basement of class.
Vulgar images of torn flesh and chainsaw amputations have replaced the standard Gothic cues of rattling chains, eerie howls and inexplicable bumps in the night, which to be frank, are a lot more scary because they spur the imagination instead of prompting a gag reflex.
So no matter what your feelings about the overall horror genre may be, there’s a sunny side to the shady frames of The Lady In Black 2: Angel of Death because we’re spared the arterial gushers and déclassé decapitations.
Opting for more classic motifs, such as ghostly apparitions, porcelain dolls with cracked faces and the piercing cries of small children, director Tom Harper picks up the tattered threads of the first movie that starred Daniel Radcliffe and Janet McTeer as villagers besieged by a nasty spectre dressed in Victorian mourning garb.
Some 40 years have passed, but the ghost is angrier than ever because now she’s at risk of being upstaged by a brandnew demon named Adolf Hitler.
It’s the early years of the Second World War, and bombs are raining down nightly. In an effort to save the children, the British government begins Operation Pied Piper, the methodical relocation of young people from the big cities into hamlets across the countryside.
For teachers Jean Hogg (Helen McCrory) and Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox), playing chaperon to a swarm of young people is a familiar and rewarding task, but the degree of difficulty grows more intense with each passing second.
The kids have all been traumatized. Some are now orphans, and even when they reach their supposed haven of Eel Marsh House, a desolate mansion sitting in the middle of a shallow, mud-bottom swamp, the kids are still terrified. And who could blame them? They are living in an abandoned castle with holes in the ceilings and creaking floorboards. Behind every loose flap of yellowing wallpaper, we can feel an evil presence lurking, and for the first half of the movie, the pending threat is enough to keep us interested as director Harper uses minimal imagery to spooky effect.
We see a pasty white hand creep through the cracks like an albino spider. Then, one eye peers through a hole in the ceiling, spying on young Edward (Oaklee Pendergast), the heartbroken boy who lost his parents in an air raid.
The spirit is obsessed by the boy, giving him toys and separating him from the others in a bid to take him as her own by luring him into the black marsh.
Imagine the Brontë sisters on a bad acid trip and you can get a fleeting frisson of what this movie feels like, because for all the bleak imagery and horror archetype, we actually get two strong female heroines.
Miss Parkins and Mrs. Hogg have a stiff upper lip. They keep calm and carry on with all the repressive urgency that makes the English so noble and unflappable in a crisis, but also so hard to reach emotionally.
The evil spirit is the exact opposite. She is a drama queen with a dark agenda, and she’s willing to emote everyone to death — quite literally. The result is classic cat and mouse stuff, with the woman in black playing the predator to a variety of mice.
The more we care about the characters, the better the movie works, and Harper pushes all the right buttons by making the pretty young teacher a lovable heroine. The other thing he does well is offer a false sense of safety by introducing a young fighter pilot stationed nearby.
Combined with period production design that makes everything feel ashtray grey, the movie has a polished sheen that makes it feel somewhat classier than generic blood and sludge, but it’s still ponderous in its dramatic approach: We’re always waiting for the next thump, the next shriek, the next inexplicable expiration.
Harper delivers the mood, but he can’t punch out on the payoff. The climax is underwhelming, and the emotion drains faster than a slit carotid, leaving this movie half-dead on the slab — waiting for one more illmotivated reanimation.