cinema history class: the woman in black

Session: Get Your Haunted House On, Week 4
Movie: The Woman in Black (1989)
Directed by Herbert Wise

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A lawyer travles to an old mansion to wrap of the affairs of its dead owner -- unaware that there's a murderous spirit haunting the place. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
I had a hard time figuring out how to rate this film; I saw the remake when it was in theaters, and that helped me to understand the story in a way I wouldn't have if I were going into this blind. As it is, I don't quite know the background that we, the viewers, are supposed to know. I do recall -- it's been years since I saw the remake, and there may be subtle differences in the backstory -- that somehow the ghost is of a woman whose child died, and she blames the town for his death. So she's been exacting her revenge by killing the townspeople's children. Knowing that was enough for me to make sense of what was happening.

But my ability to understand a movie shouldn't be dependent on having seen its remake. That represents a failure of exposition. In all fairness -- and this is part of why it's hard to know how to rate this -- I can't say for sure what I would or wouldn't have known without the remake. Maybe I would have picked up enough? It's difficult to say.

What's beyond dispute is the fact that some crucial background was either not presented or presented with great subtlety. And I do generally appreciate subtlety in story-telling. I do, however, think this was a bit too subtle, which is why I gave it a relatively low grade.

Joe, for his part, was more bothered than I was by the missing explanation. Of course, he didn't have the advantage of having seen the remake. Echoing the point I made above, he said that he shouldn't have to rely on a friend to explain such crucial matters. The thing he wants most in a movie is a story. It doesn't have to be a great story. But when he sits down for a movie he wants to be told a story. ANd felt that this movie failed to deliver -- hence the extremely low grade he gave this film.

I was actually kind of shocked by the grade Joe gave the movie. I knew he was unhappy; he had made that clear from the moment the movie ended. But I figured that meant he would give it a 9 -- under his grading system, science fiction and horror movies bottom out at 9 and grade below that are generally for things such as romantic comedies and foreign art films. So when he gave a horror film a 2, well, that was really making a statement.

While The Woman in Black had its shortcomings, I think it deserved better than that. But, then, who am I to tell Joe what rating he should give a film?

I do have to acknowledge that I've been thinking about this movie a lot over the last couple days, which makes me wonder if I should bump up my rating.

Ratings:

Me: 7

Dave: 8.5

Ethan: 8

Joe: 2 (Update: In July, 2022, Joe retroactively changed his rating to 9).
Sean: 1 out of 4

Following up on Joe's sugestion that we each pick our favorite film from each session, I present our picks:
Me: Burnt Offerings
Dave: Anything but The Woman in Black
Ethan: Burnt Offerings
Joe:  Burnt Offerings
Sean: Ineligible to vote, since he missed one of the films.