A Ghost Story That Forgot to Be Scary
There’s a particular sadness in watching The Woman in Black: Angel of Death—not the good kind of sadness that makes your hair stand on end, but the kind that makes you wonder if everyone involved got lost on the way to a more interesting movie. This isn’t just a sequel; it’s a séance gone wrong. You can practically feel Hammer Films trying to conjure the spirit of their 2012 hit, waving the Ouija board of brand recognition and whispering, “Please, remember Daniel Radcliffe?”
But Daniel’s long gone, replaced by a group of World War II evacuees and their teachers, because nothing says terrifying ghost story like government-mandated childcare in rural England. The setup has potential—a haunted house during the Blitz! Bombs above, ghosts below!—but the execution has all the tension of a scone cooling on a windowsill.
The Plot: Ghosts Hate Evacuees Too
It’s been 30 years since the first film, and the Woman in Black—still pissed off about her dead kid—is haunting again because, apparently, eternal vengeance has no expiration date. Enter Eve Parkins (Phoebe Fox), a London schoolteacher who agrees to shepherd a bunch of children away from the Blitz to the coastal village of Crythin Gifford, a place whose name sounds like it was invented by a drunk Tolkien.
Their destination? Eel Marsh House, the world’s least Airbnb-able property. It’s damp, isolated, and about one broken teacup away from total collapse. Naturally, this is where they decide to bunk down. Because if the bombs don’t get you, the black mold and malevolent spirits will.
The group meets a few locals who scream “we’ve seen this movie before” and promptly vanish from the narrative. One of them, a raving man named Jacob (Ned Dennehy), babbles about death, curses, and the usual rural pleasantries. Eve, who has clearly never seen a horror film in her life, ignores every red flag until the ghostly nonsense begins.
The Scares: PG-13 Paranormal Drowsiness
Let’s talk about the scares—or rather, the complete absence of them. The first Woman in Black had Daniel Radcliffe wandering through that house with only a candle, creating tension so thick you could cut it with a Victorian butter knife. This sequel tries the same trick but forgets the butter knife, the tension, and possibly the point.
Every scare here is telegraphed like a bad Tinder opener. Creak. Pause. Music swells. Creak again. Nothing happens. THEN—BAM!—a ghost face pops up like a faulty jack-in-the-box. The first time, it’s mildly effective. By the fifth, you could set your watch by it. It’s not horror; it’s Pavlovian disappointment.
The Woman in Black herself, once a figure of eerie menace, now resembles an understudy from The Haunted Mansion Live! She doesn’t so much haunt as she drops by uninvited. You half-expect her to sigh, “Sorry, just checking in. Carry on with your exposition.”
The Characters: Emotional Flatlines and British Stoicism
Phoebe Fox’s Eve Parkins is a perfectly fine actress stuck in a thankless role. Her defining trait? Guilt. She’s haunted by the memory of giving up her baby, which means she gets to look sad in soft lighting for 90 minutes. It’s the sort of trauma that’s supposed to make her “emotionally attuned” to the supernatural, but mostly it just makes her bad at supervising children.
Jeremy Irvine plays Harry Burnstow, an RAF pilot who spends most of the film looking handsome and confused—a sort of airborne furniture. When he’s not staring moodily into the fog, he’s flirting with Eve like a man who’s been hit on the head by a propeller. His big emotional reveal (he’s disgraced! grounded! sad!) lands with the force of a feather duster.
The rest of the cast consists of:
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Helen McCrory, the headmistress whose stiff upper lip could deflect artillery shells.
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A mute child who looks perpetually seconds away from an asthma attack.
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A gang of brats who exist solely to die offscreen or look scared near wallpaper.
By the halfway mark, you stop caring who lives, dies, or develops lifelong therapy needs. When one of the kids suffocates themselves with a gas mask, it’s not tragic—it’s just the first time the film manages to wake you up.
The Setting: Eel Marsh House—Now With 20% More Mud
Credit where it’s due: the set design remains a triumph of damp misery. Eel Marsh House still oozes Gothic atmosphere like a corpse leaking tea. Every inch is soaked, creaking, and possessed by the ghosts of bad architectural decisions.
Unfortunately, cinematography alone can’t save a ghost story where even the ghosts look bored. The endless gray palette feels less “moody” and more “postcard from seasonal depression.” The fog is so thick it should’ve been billed as a supporting character. At one point, Eve chases an apparition through the marsh, and it’s genuinely unclear if the ghost or the cinematographer has lost direction.
The Themes: Trauma, Motherhood, and Other Recycled Goods
The script desperately wants to say something about motherhood and guilt—Eve gave up her baby, Jennet lost hers, and now everyone’s trauma is floating through the house like airborne asbestos. But the emotional through-line is as murky as the swamp. The film mistakes repetition for depth: if you hear one more echo of a crying child, you might start rooting for the Luftwaffe.
The first Woman in Black balanced tragedy and terror; this one just reheats leftovers. It’s haunted by its predecessor’s success, and no séance of sentimentality can resurrect the magic.
The Direction: Stiff Upper Fright
Director Tom Harper tries, bless him. There’s some craft here—moody lighting, period costumes, and a few well-composed frames that whisper, “See, I can do Gothic too!” But it’s like watching someone play a violin with oven mitts. You recognize the effort, but the sound is all wrong.
The pacing lurches between “nothing’s happening” and “everything’s happening at once,” with the occasional ghost cameo to remind you that, yes, this is technically horror. The editing cuts so frequently during “scary” moments that you start to suspect the Woman in Black has developed teleportation as a coping mechanism.
The Ending: Death by Plot Convenience
By the climax, Eve’s rescuing the mute kid from the marsh while being attacked by the same ghost who’s been haunting that same spot for 30 years, which is frankly just lazy haunting. RAF Harry dives in for a heroic save, only to be immediately dragged down by child ghosts—proof that no good deed goes unpunished in a sequel.
Then, in a twist that lands like a wet scone, Eve adopts the surviving child and moves back to London. The ghost follows them. Because of course she does. Evil spirits apparently have nothing better to do during wartime than haunt one random woman for having maternal regrets.
The final jump scare—a broken photo frame—feels less like terror and more like a cry for help from the production crew.
The Verdict: The Woman in Black 2—Now 50% Less Soul
⭐☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5 Gas Masks)
The Woman in Black: Angel of Death isn’t just a bad horror sequel—it’s a séance for a spirit that doesn’t want to come back. It’s drenched in atmosphere but bone-dry in ideas, a film so afraid of its own shadow that it forgets to make one.
What could have been a chilling wartime ghost story about trauma and survival ends up as a muddled rehash, doomed to wander late-night cable schedules for eternity. If the first Woman in Black made you sleep with the lights on, this one will make you check your watch instead.
At least the title’s honest: by the end, death sounds like a mercy.
