31 Nights of Horror The Woman in Black

Platform: Amazon Prime

Director: James Watkins

Release Year: 2012

Watch Date: October 12, 2023

My Rating: 7.2

I’m gonna be honest. I never really wanted to watch this movie because I thought it looked really boring. But I recently read the book which was slow, but pretty good, so I thought I’d give the movie a chance. And what better time to give it a chance, than during the 31 Nights of Horror?!

The book wasn’t really scary, so I knew that the movie would have to stray from the book. The movie did a pretty good job of sticking to the plot, though. A young English lawyer is required to go to the countryside to the estate of an elderly client who recently died (the reasons for having to go are slightly different in the book). The people of the town don’t like the house because it’s in the middle of the marsh, it’s dark, it’s foreboding, and naturally, it has a dark secret.

While the lawyer is at the house, he sees a woman in black (in the book, he first sees her at the client’s funeral), and shortly after, a child dies in a strange accident. The town blames him for coming to the house and seeing the woman in black. Since he is at the house, he will see her often. He discovers letters and a child nursery and puts together that the woman in black had a child out of wedlock and was forced to give the baby to her sister or be sent to an insane asylum.

One day, on the way home, the sister’s carriage goes off the road and sinks into the muddy marsh. The sister got out, but the child was left to drown in the mud. The woman in black never got over it. She hung herself in the nursery and now goes on in death, convincing the town’s children to come with her by killing themselves (jumping out of windows, drinking lye, lighting themselves on fire). In the end, the lawyer’s own son comes to see him and sees the woman in black. He then walks onto the train tracks with an oncoming train. The lawyer goes to save him….they both die and are reunited with his deceased wife (this did not happen in the book as the book is a reflection many years later).

I loved the dark color scheme of the movie. The acting, plot, script, and jump scares were all good. It wasn’t great though, which is why it got an average score. I don’t plan on watching it again, nor do I think I will watch any sequels (there is at least one).

Photo Credit: imdb.com