Grim Fairy Tale

Rating: Null/10 (29 February 2012)

I saw "The Woman In Black" on the London stage in 2009. Then, it was a two-man show, although the two men didn't play nearly as many parts as appear in this picture. The sets were very spare and I thought the whole production was a tribute to the ingenuity of the stage director.
The movie, however, is like "The Woman In Black" on steroids, with many added characters and a great deal more plot than it needed. Instead of creating the terrifying moments in your imagination, this movie is loaded with visual ones in almost every scene. Some are manufactured - movies today like to 'sneak up' on audiences with a sudden apparition accompanied by a sudden blast of loud music, which I feel is cheating. It gets tiresome after a while and I couldn't help thinking they had it right in the play; leave some of the horror in the audience's mind.
The mood of the play was of an engrossing ghost story, related by one of the principals who lived it. This movie is a relentless downer - doom and pathos throughout and with no comic relief anywhere in sight. No one smiles or strikes a cheerful note and there is no uplifting message to be found. This makes it hard to find a rooting interest in any of the characters.
Nevertheless, if you like scary movies, this one is for you, because it is one of the scariest I can remember. But see the movie first before you see the play, because the play will spoil it for you.