Being the unsociable hermit that I am, last night was the first time in a long while that I actually went on a little outing with my friends. This mostly consisted of waiting in line at the movies and then sitting in the theater watching The Woman in Black while a majority of the audience screamed in my ear.
To sum it up, the movie was okay. Not really that scary, contrary to the 90% of the audience screaming their heads off (at the wrong parts). I think most of the people who went to see it were just die hard Harry Potter fans.
The plot for The Woman in Black is nothing new really. Actually it was a movie based on an older movie based on an even older book. The movie starts off with a scene of three young girls playing with their (slightly creepy) dollies and then spontaneously jumping out of the window. Then, after the opening credits, it jumps over to the character played by Daniel Radcliffe (or as most of the audience knew him, Harry Potter. So many people gasped in awe when he first appeared. It was a tad annoying really). I don't really remember what his name was, but I believe it was something along the lines of Arthur or Alfred. So anyway, Arthur/Alfred gets a job in which he must travel from early 20th century London to the countryside to sort through some paperwork at an abandoned house a little ways off from a remote village. He leaves his young son with the nanny, both of whom will rejoin him after three days.
Upon entering the village he is met with a cold welcome. The townspeople make it clear that they want nothing to do with him and try to get him to leave as soon as possible. After finally bribing someone to take him up to the abandoned property he is supposed to investigate, things start getting intense and the scares begin. Only problem is, the scares aren't really scary.
Most of the scenes consisted of jump scares. A short silence, a random build-up of music, a peek around a corner, the finding of something absolutely nonthreatening and LO AND BEHOLD IT'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU. That being said, it reminded me of all the horror games I'd played/watched other people play. So most of the time, I saw it coming. For one part, I even hummed along to the mysterious thumping noises, dancing in my seat with my popcorn.
Honestly, I have to say the most entertaining part of the movie was the audience watching it with me. It was probably the wimpiest audience I ever sat with. I found it interesting how they were more scared than the actual protagonist. Every time a door so much as creaked, they started screaming. One guy was even wailing like some kind of opera singer. It got a bit more hectic towards the end of the movie, with the last scene as so and so was about to die. The audience was practically jumping out of their seats screaming at the screen as if they could change the final outcome. One young man shouted "BITCH!" when the movie showed the ghost lady's face on the screen before the credits (I applaud him, by the way. Wish I knew who he was.)
Bottom line is, if you want a movie that will truly scare you, not just make you jump or gag, keep looking. If you want to watch this movie and really ENJOY it, watch it with an audience, because I guarantee the audience will entertain you more than the movie itself.
