The sequel to 2012’s breakout horror hit The Woman in Black takes place forty
years later in the heart of the blitz. A group of children are evacuated to the
derelict Eel Marsh House in order to escape the escalating war, under the
watchful eye of strict Mrs Hogg (Helen McCrory) and her student Eve (Phoebe
Fox), when things (inevitably) begin to go ‘bump’ in the night, and one child
in particular is drawn further and further into the shadows.
Having rather enjoyed the original despite a rather mixed
critical response, I was struggling to think how much further the Woman in Black story could be taken, and
so apparently were the film-makers. The plot and the reasons for bringing the
titular ghoul back to the big screen are either incomprehensibly told or
forgotten in amongst everything else going on, and it isn’t long before the
well-trodden ground of the day=good, night=bad cycle begins to play out.
Fox and McCrory do their best with roles that more or less
come down to wandering about in dark rooms looking worried, and Jeremy Irvine (who
appears to be rapidly transforming into Jack O’Connell) is fairly enjoyable as
a charming but secretive pilot stationed at a nearby airfield. The child
actors, particularly Oaklee Pendergast as Edward – the child who falls under
the dark spell of the house – appear fairly capable, but for the most part are denigrated
to background props or plot points.
While there is an interesting psychological horror movie to
be made about terrified children torn from their families and thrust into what
turns out to be greater danger than the infinite fall of bombs, but this is not
it. Hammer, steadfast staple of the horror genre, has fallen prey to the cattle
prod symptoms of modern horror, with merely one or two good frights built up around
genuine suspense thrown in at random. Even the climactic final act feels limp
and unwanted, appearing to build up speed before coming to a dead stop. The
melancholy atmosphere and unrelenting paranoia of the first film have all but
fled.
Angel of Death (a
title that is really never explained) is not without some chills: the jet black
cinematography and the likeable cast of characters do very little to stave off
the plodding plot, unintelligible motivations and drought of decent scares.
Poor show, Hammer.
★★☆☆☆
