The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Tom Harper/Starring: Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine, Oaklee Pendergast and Helen McCrory

The 2012 film The Woman in Black told the story of a young lawyer, played by Daniel Radcliffe, whose stay at an English country manor became a frightening ordeal, for he encounters the ghost of woman who seeks revenge for her drowned child. The film was ably cast, had atmosphere and its share of mild frights. Now comes the sequel: The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death; which is not so much a sequel as a continuation of the the ghost's reign of terror. Like the original (pardon my amnesia, I can recall little of it. What does that tell you?), director Tom Harper's film offers more gloom and a few creepy moments, but like its predecessor, I know I'll be hard-pressed to remember much about it come June.

Set forty years after the first film, 1941 has brought the Wehrmacht to England's front door. Daily bombings and the threat of an invasion have prompted the government to evacuate children to safer places at home and abroad. Acting as guardians for one such group of refugees is a woman named Jean Hogg (Helen McCrory, playing an excellent harpy) and her governess Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox), who have secured the infamous Eel Marsh House in the country as a temporary shelter and home.

After boarding a train bound for the country, Eve meets a young, handsome pilot named Harry Burnstow (Jeremy Irvine) and before she and her group reach their destination, the foundations of a romance have already been laid.

The group then boards a bus to carry them on to Eel Marsh but a flat tire delays them. As Eve wanders about some abandoned buildings nearby, she encounters an old man raving incomprehensibly. Frightened, she hurries back to the bus, where the children and an impatient Mrs. Hogg wait on board.

When the group arrives at dismal-looking manor, Mrs. Hogg complains bitterly about the condition of the premises, which are more than just a little run down. Eve tries to make the best of the surroundings as she leads the children into their sleeping quarters, where peeling walls and ceiling holes greet them.

Eve learns that one of the children named Edward (Oaklee Pendergast) has been rendered mute by the devastating loss of his parents in an air-raid. While he silently draws, some of the boys single him out for teasing and pranks. Eve becomes sensitive to Edward's self-imposed isolation and tries in vain to get him to mix with the other children.

She begins to hear strange noises around the house and as the days pass, she is convinced someone else is lurking on the grounds, though Mrs. Hogg is loathe to frighten the children with the news.

Eve begins to see a woman in a black dress skulking about.

Following a nasty prank the boys play on Edward, where they lock him in a room with creepy-looking dolls and a rocking chair, she breaks into the room to find him staring into a corner of the room. When she tries to coax a confession from him about what he saw, Edward uses a notepad to convey messages from the mysterious woman.

The group's stay at Eel House becomes more harrowing when one of Edward's tormentors takes a somnambulant turn into the marsh. In the morning, as Mrs. Hogg and Eve search desperately for the missing boy, they find him lying in the marsh, dead; his muddy body coiled in barbwire.

The mystery of Eel House begins to reveal itself to the women as they learn the black clad woman was once an asylum patient who gave birth to a child who was subsequently taken from her. Before she could reunite with the child, it drowned in the marsh. The creepy cross Eve sees poking out from the water stands as a mute memorial to the child. Eve and Mrs. Hogg also learn the black-clad woman carries on a vendetta, which includes any and all children as her victims.

The two women enlist the help of Eve's boyfriend Harry to remove the children from the house, where they are driven to the airfield where he is supposedly stationed. They discover the airfield is actually a dummy airbase the government uses to deceive German bombers.

Eve discovers Harry is a decommissioned pilot who bears the guilt of having been responsible for the deaths of his crew when his plane went down over the ocean. Having lost the confidence of the British air force, his assignment to the dummy airfield is an indignity that compounds his guilt.
It comes to light that the malevolent woman in black is feeding off the group's grief, guilt and anxiety. Her menu includes Mrs. Hogg fretting over her husband and sons serving in the war, Edward's grieving for his parents and Eve's own horrific past, which involves a child conceived and delivered out of wedlock, and of course Harry's survivor's guilt.

The ending involves a sacrifice and a rescue in the marsh, where Eve must confront the evil gripping Eel Marsh House.

Director Tom Harper, with the assistance of cinematographer George Steel, are able to recapture Eel Marsh's sinister gloom and the war-ravaged ruins of London, while the set design dazzles the eye with a sufficiently decrepit manor; convincing rubble and crumble are seen everywhere.

But Harper is better at making everything look rather than feel dark and threatening. He is quite adept at making us jump, but brief shocks aren't the same as sustained dread. We know things will pop out and startle us but I never truly felt fear. And for the Woman in Black herself, she seems more a pill than a hellish specter with a homicidal agenda.

I certainly can't fault the performances. British horror filmmakers, unlike their American counterparts, are more apt to cast actors rather than bubble-headed hams in key roles.

The Woman in Black 2 doesn't really build on its predecessor, it only mimics it. And though it seems pointless for me to mention, the film leaves the possibility of a third installment wide open. What horror film doesn't these days?

So I guess we can expect more of the Woman in Black. Will she ever work out her issues? Who knows? The more relevant question may be; will I be on hand to witness such a rehabilitation, if and when it should occur? My few and dear readers, you should know by now I never learn my lesson. But you should also know you can count on me to save you a few bucks. Let me jump on those grenades for you.