The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death

Starring: Phoebe Fox, Helen McCrory, Oaklee Pendergast, Jeremy Irvine, Adrian Rawlins
Directed by: Tom Harper
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
2015

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A group of children are taken out of London to escape bombings during World War II and seek refuge at the haunted Eel Marsh House.

Review:

Tim: The Woman in Black was a decent enough horror film. I enjoyed Daniel Radcliffe in the role and the film was a fairly spooky period horror film. I don't believe anyone was clamoring for a sequel, but here we go. The story takes place 40 years after the events of the last movie. By all accounts, the movie is a pale shadow of the previous film. This is a very disappointing movie.

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death isn't a terrible movie in as much as it's completely ineffective in every sense. I never cared about anything on screen for even a fraction of a second. The characters are boring. The movie relies on cheap jump scares instead of anything actually creepy. This movie isn't frightening in the least. There's stretches where it is just dull. The movie relies almost exclusively on recycled cliches of other horror movies. From start to finish, this is just an underwhelming effort.

The first movie was helped by Radcliffe's star power. Here, the biggest star is Phoebe Fox, someone I've never heard of. The sad thing is that she actually gives a decent performance, it's just that the movie around her is so bad. She makes a decent horror movie heroine, save for one issue- I never identified with nor especially cared about her character. There was nothing compelling about her. I wasn't interested in her story or who she was as a character. She was a fill-in-the-blanks character. The same can be said for the rest of the cast. There's a host of nondescript children (except for Edward, whom I didn't care about). There's a mean old battleaxe of a woman I didn't care about, a non-charismatic love interest. Really, this whole film is filled with shadows of people who weren't the least interesting. That is a major reason why the movie was a failure.

The other issue is that it's just not that scary. Not a whole lot actually happens of real substance. There's a few scenes sprinkled throughout that are supposed to be scary, but none of them are. The movie throws too many jump scares, always an indicator of a total lack of substance in a horror movie. I can't think of one image that was really frightening. You see mysterious figures standing behind main characters (not scary), you see the same disturbing nightmare multiple times (not scary, even when the nurse turns into a ghoul and screams at the camera). It's just like everyone involved was determined to make the most generic horror movie possible. They succeeded, and this movie is very bad as a result.

This film is only 98 minutes long and I wanted it to end after about the first 15. The film is also way too dark. I couldn't see anything for long stretches, to the point where I had to increase the brightness on my television (and I still couldn't see much). There is an odd scene at a dummy airfield which felt grossly out of place. That featured one of the most obnoxiously obvious "scares" of the film. Hint- if you're crawling behind a little boy with his back turned to you, you can almost guarantee he'll turn around and be something you weren't expecting. All I could do was roll my eyes. By the time we get to the climax back at the haunted house, I was just counting the seconds until the film ended.

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death (which is a terrible title, by the way) makes the most cardinal sin of horror movies. The first film does well, so you rush into a sequel with a lesser known cast, less experienced and proficient film makers, and you hope to make a quick cash grab on the cheap. Shame on everyone involved in this film. This is why horror movies have such a bad reputation. The first film wasn't even that good, but it's significantly better than this piece of garbage.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 4.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Woman in Black