this is what I did this week instead of work
I went to see The Woman in Black so I could look at Daniel Radcliffe not wearing glasses. Pros: Daniel Radcliffe not wearing glasses. Cons: half-assed ending.
The opening scene is three little girls wearing identical Victorian black boots with heels. Every kid in this movie is wearing the exact same shoes, wtf? Anyway, they're having a normal tea party until they all get a weird look on their faces and no one can look creepier than a creepy kid. They all get up at once and jump out the attic windows. Dude, that's why they invented child locks.
Then there are about two extremely minimalist scenes of someone getting married. Prooobably Daniel Radcliffe and Dead Wife, judging by the guy's itty bitty little hands. In the present he's shaving and deciding not to cut his throat open with the razor, and sort of sees his dead wife in the mirror behind him but she's not in the room(she's dead!). DR has a cute scene with Daniel Radcliffe Jr., 4, who is sad that DR Sr. is going away. DR Jr. has drawn a cute drawing of DR Sr. getting on a train with a sad face, which is both cute and sad. The drawing is part of a book DR Jr. has put together and the next two days are blank, but on Friday both DRs are together next to a train 'cause Jr. is going to follow Sr. to his destination in three days. Both DRs are way cute in this scene.
Next scene, the "England Prevails!" guy from V for Vendetta is like "Daniel Radcliffe, I'm sorry your wife died but you've been dead weight for four years. Go to the ass end of north England and sort out this widow's house or I'll fire you." So DR gets on a train. He ends up sitting across from a big guy named Sam, or maybe a regular-sized guy named Sam, it's hard to tell because Daniel Radcliffe is so short. The guy ends up giving DR a ride into town in his motor car(!), because Sam is rich, and invites DR to dinner the next day while DR is standing in the pouring rain because that's polite. At the town inn the only room left in the place is the attic, about which the inn owners are like SIGNIFICANT LOOK SIGNIFICANT LOOK SIGNIFICANT LOOK, and it's the attic those three girls jumped out of! Oh no! This has no further bearing on the plot.
The next day, which is Wednesday according to Daniel Radcliffe Jr.'s drawing, Daniel Radcliffe Sr. goes to the local lawyer who's supposed to help with the widow's crap. He's not there but Daniel Radcliffe walks right in anyway like he owns the place and catches Mrs. Jerome bringing a tray of food up from the basement. Mr. Jerome shows up suddenly all "HERE'S ALL THE PAPERWORK FROM THE HOUSE THERE'S A GUY OUT FRONT WITH YOUR STUFF GET ON THE MOTHERFUCKING TRAIN" and Daniel Radcliffe is understandably disinclined to do so. He bribes Carriage Guy with six whole shillings and Carriage Guy takes him to the widow's place, Eel Marsh House. Eel Marsh House is on an island in the middle of a giant, shallow-ass sea, and WHY WOULD ANYONE LIVE THERE? How did they find that island in the first place? How did they build that narrow little road to it? How did they get building materials OUT there on that pathetic little road? But anyway, then Carriage Guy goes "I have come get you at 5:00 because that's when the tide goes back out" and WHO LIVES ON AN ISLAND THAT'S INACCESSIBLE WHEN THE TIDE IS IN? You can't even take a boat there, it's ten inches of water over twelve feet of quickmud! That's not eccentricity, that's dumbassery. Morons! BTW, there's a giant cross ten feet from the road, right by the gate to the house.
So yeah, Carriage Guy leaves Daniel Radcliffe at Eel Marsh House and G's TFO, and DR goes in. The widow supposedly died a month ago but the house looks like no one's lived there for ten years, all vines up the side and everything covered in cobwebs. He hears noises from upstairs because oh yeah, horror movie, and goes exploring. From an upstairs window he sees a woman in mourning clothes out on the lawn, the whole of which is also a graveyard, ew, and goes outside to look. He sees a variety of tombs: the widow's, her kid's, her sister's. DR looks around at the house and THERE'S A LADY STANDING IN THE WINDOW SHE SLAPS THE GLASS AND DISAPPEARS ....yeah, that wasn't very scary. DR goes back in to read some papers (finally) and finds the kid's death certificate. Muddy Dead Kid was seven and drowned in the marsh approximately eight feet from the gates. His body wasn't recovered, I assume due to a lack of effort from all involved because he was TEN FEET FROM THE ROAD. Later DR starts hearing noises from outside where it's become all misty because the area wasn't damp enough already. There are lady screams and horse screams and kid screams and DR takes off running down the road? I guess? it's hard to tell for all the mist. He's shouting at the screaming, and turns around and SUDDENLY THERE'S CARRIAGE GUY who's like ...........let's go.
So back in the village, Daniel Radcliffe is at the constable's station reporting the accident he heard like listen, we better get back out there, someone fell in the mud. The constable, who appears to be 80 years old is like, umm, yeah..... I'll be right back, and he disappears into the back in a manner that makes it clear he's going to hide until DR leaves. So DR is standing there waiting for the guy to come back (he's never coming back), and two kids come in dragging a third between them. She's all pale and horrible looking, and the other kids say that she drank lye because their mom was out. Okay, time out: first of all, who left lye where she could get it? Second of all, WHO DRINKS LYE? Does it taste good? Does it look like milk? Is she dumb enough we should be glad she won't pass on her genes? WTAF. Time in: The girl is like pale, pale, barfs blood, dies in DR's arms. Daniel Radcliffe is like :/
In the next scene, he's standing in front of a mausoleum and it's sunny out, and what day is this that it's sunny at like, 6:00? It must be Wednesday still, 'cause he's at Rich Guy's house for dinner. Sam the Rich Guy is like, my son is buried in that tomb. Also please don't mention Eel Marsh House to my wife, and don't mention children, beaches, or children drowning on beaches. So they go in to dinner and Crazy Wife shows up all smiles. She's like, the twins are gonna eat with us! And the twins: are dogs. In sailor suits. Sam is like, please don't say anything about my crazy wife please don't say anything about my crazy wife please don't say anything about my crazy wife and Daniel Radcliffe makes a face that say whaaa? and then Crazy Wife asks about DR's family and he answers like a moron that he has a son. This gives Crazy Wife the opportunity to point out her two-dimensional painting of Drowned Rich Kid, and she's all "I love to draw. Nathaniel loved to draw too. HE WANTS TO DRAW FOR YOU RIGHT NOW." and she carves the shit out of a really nice table with a steak knife. Sam calls for the butler to dose her up with chloroform, and carries her out of the dining room all sad that his wife is crazy. DR checks out the carving, which is a stick figure hanging itself.
Now I don't remember when this scene happened but let's say it's here. Daniel Radcliffe Sr. is remembering when Daniel Radcliffe Jr. was born. He's hanging out in a hallway outside a closed door, from which are issuing the standard screams of pre-anesthetic childbirth (let's all take a minute to be thankful for modern medicine). There's a lot of screaming and then suddenly no screaming, and a nurse comes out with a baby. "It's a boy," she says, and Daniel Radcliffe has a cute :) Then the doctor, says "I'm so sorry" and lets DR see his dead wife's face real quick before he covers it up with a very bloody sheet. DR is like D: Great bedside manner!
The next day (in the present) DR and Sam are driving in Sam's motor car to Eel Marsh house and they stop at Jerome's house. No one's there except the kid he keeps locked in the basement (!?) and she really doesn't want to talk to DR because she thinks he killed that blood-barfing kid. Also she lives in a locked room in the basement, wtf. On their way out of town all the men in the village, which is six, are blocking the road. They're all, don't go to that house. And DR is all, must go to house. Then Sam is all, we won't go to house just kidding gonna drive by you real fast. Sam leaves DR at the house, where DR intends to work through the night to get this shit done. Sam leaves his plucky little dog for company and drives off. This is where the house haunting gets real.
Daniel Radcliffe reads some expository papers so we learn what's happening. Turns out Muddy Kid who died SIX FEET FROM THE HOUSE was the widow's sister's kid, only the widow and her husband had the sister declared insane and adopted the kid for themselves. Crazy Sister spent seven years writing increasingly illegible letters to them like hey, you assholes, I want my kid, never gonna forgive you, rot in hell satan spawn, you won't even let me talk to him. Time out: you can make that much damn noise as a ghost, but as a living person in the same house with a curious seven-year-old you couldn't attract his attention? Come on now, make an effort. Time in: Crazy Sister is for real unhappy about the situation, and that's before they let her kid drown in the marsh SIX FEET FROM THE HOUSE, and event she witnessed from the upstairs window that she ghost-slapped earlier. She is very adamant that she will never forgive her sister and brother-in-law. There is also a death certificate for her, citing cause of death as "self-murder". How quaint!
Then this weird noise starts upstairs, and it's like CREAK THUMP. CREAK THUMP for about an hour while DR tries to get into the locked room the noise is in. He goes looking for an axe but by the time he comes back the door's wide open, and a giant rocking chair is going full tilt in the middle of the room with nothing to move it! But that stops and one of the 400 creepy fucking toys in the room starts playing creepy tinkling circus music. The room is the nursery and this dead kid had a million little wind-up monkeys with super creepy eyes that play instruments, and what is easily the world's scariest clown doll. This thing has fangs and a forked tongue and no eyelids. Lord have mercy on whoever made that, because they were obviously acting under Beelzebub's direct orders.
Then suddenly DR sees the veiny dead woman hanging herself from the ceiling, hopping off the rocking chair like she's playing jump rope all bouncy and stuff (how do you balance on a rocking chair long enough to hang a noose?) and all of the sudden she's at eye level and rushes him, screaming, and yes, that was scary (the next eighteen times she does it are also surprising, but less original. This seems to be her only trick). So he's like, wtaf, and looks out the window, and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST A LITTLE MUD-COVERED MUDDY KID CLIMBS OUT OF THE BOG RIGHT NEXT TO THE GIANT CROSS that is the wrongest thing I've seen since a Paranormal Activity 2 trailer and this is why I don't see horror movies. The creepy little fucker heads towards the house, walking on the bog like it ain't no thang. Daniel Radcliffe is like O.O, which I get. So he heads downstairs to where the front door doorknob is rattling like crazy and the dog is all BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK and he tries to open the door, which I am less down with.
DR shouts "who's there?", which is hilarious, and Muddy Kid stops rattling the doorknob like shit! he heard me! and DR goes outside in the pouring rain. There's nothing out there but the ghosts of sixteen dead kids, ew, so he runs back in the house to find little muddy footprints headed upstairs. And then he follows them, because in the Victorian age there were no existent ghost stories for him to have read warning him about exactly this kind of behavior. He heads upstairs to the nursery, where if you tear up some ABC wallpaper you will find a nice note written in bright red saying YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM which is totally true, kid was three feet from the road. When DR turns around from reading this cheery note, there's the little mud-covered kid screaming at him! 1) Like crazy mother, like crazy son. 2) Aaaaugh! (Also note that the ABC wallpaper is green, which in Victorian times would have been made of poisonous chemicals. I wonder if Crazy Sister would have been as pissed if the kid had died from wallpaper poisoning?)
DR goes running out of the room and the woman in black is flying at him from the other end of the hall, screaming some more, so he ducks in a room and locks the door. Bad idea though, 'cause it's Muddy Kid's room, and mud starts bubbling up out of the middle of the bed and then something solid starts rising and DR's like I WOULD LIKE TO OPEN THE DOOR UNLOCK UNLOCK UNLOCK and he goes running to the front door which is being knocked on again only this time it's Sam and DR's like .....oh. I guess it's Thursday now? I don't understand the timeline, and it's always overcast so you never know what time it is. Anyway, on the way back into town Sam says I totally don't believe your story, maybe your mind was playing tricks on you. Daniel Radcliffe is thanks for nothing, you unbeliever.
Back in town it turns out Jerome's house is on fire. Whoops! And some dudes are keeping him from running back in, but no one's keeping DR from running in, and he gets all the way downstairs just to see the woman in black standing there as Jerome Jr. dumps lamp oil over herself. What is she, protesting the occupation of her country? Anyway, she dead. DR and Sam go back to Sam's house for a nap, 'cause it's been a doozy of a day.
Later that day, when it's sunny ('cause they filmed both these scenes on the one sunny day of production) DR's chillin' in front of Drowned Rich Kid's tomb when Crazy Wife comes up to tell him that whenever someone sees Crazy Sister a kid dies, because apparently that was not obvious to him. Then Crazy Wife gets semi-possessed by all the dead kids and starts speaking in that We Are Legion voice I don't like, telling about how the woman in black made Drowned Rich Kid and a buddy walk right into the sea in their Victorian Little Kid Black Boots(TM). Crazy Sister, aka the woman in black, kills kids as revenge for her dead kid. Duh. Then Crazy Wife picks a sharp rock up off the ground and carves a picture on a flat part of the mausoleum, and Sam comes up and his wife Legions at him and then she faints and he is like Crazy Wife, I love you and I wish you weren't so cra-cra. DR meanwhile is checking out the pic on the tomb and oh shit! It's the same as DR Jr.'s Friday picture showing him and DR Sr. by the train! Looks like Daniel Radcliffe Jr. is next on Crazy Sister's shit list.
This convinces DR to get down to business, and he takes Sam, who's a believer now, down to the giant cross to dig up the muddy dead kid. Sam's all they never recovered the body! Too muddy! And DR's like we have something they didn't! A car! So DR ties himself to the car and wades out to the giant cross, which is still only ten feet from the road and wow, but that bog is muddy. He gets to the cross and realizes that the carriage that sunk is just under his feet, so he dives down to tie the rope to it and hold on:
They knew where the carriage went down because there were three survivors, so they knew where the dead kid was. They had the means to put a giant cross up on the other side of the sunken carriage. But they couldn't dive six feet to drag the kid out? What kind of half-assed people were these? Crazy Sister could have dove in there and dragged the kid out by herself. Icould have done it with one leg! What a bunch of lazy bitches.
But yeah, DR ties the rope to the carriage and Sam starts backing that shit up, and eventually he drags the carriage out of the mud enough so DR can retrieve Muddy Kid's body. Inside the house, they clean off the kid and wrap him in a sheet and you know, wouldn't twenty years in the mud decompose him more than that? No? Fine. Let's all take a good long look at his green face. DR puts the kid in the nursery and surrounds him with the birthday cards he never got from his crazy mother so their ghosts can meet up (is that how that works?) and DR winds up everything single creepy toy, including the world's scariest clown. Meanwhile, Sam is downstairs and sees a thing moving over there! so he checks out this little room at the back of the house and it's Drowned Rich Kid! Who's like 'sup, and then locks Sam in the room. Why, I do not know, because nothing comes of it. But I guess while DR's letting Sam out, Muddy Kid has the chance to track muddy little footprints up to the nursery. When DR goes back to investigate, Crazy Sister screams at him again. That seems to be what DR was looking for so he and Sam break into Crazy Sister's grave and put Muddy Kid's body in there. Yay, closure.
By then it's.... Friday? And Sam and DR go into town to telegraph DR Jr. and his nanny not to come 'cause this is a fucked-up little burg, but the telegraph station has burned down. That's no good. And there's a blipvert of Crazy Sister's various grudge fodder and she yells I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU for the millionth time, so that's not a good sign either, 'cause this ghost ought to be friggin' satisfied already. DR and Sam get to the train station and there's DR Jr. and they hug and it's cute, and DR Sr. is like NANNY PLEASE GET SOME TICKETS BACK TO LONDON. WE ARE NOT STAYING IN THIS FUCKED-UP LITTLE BURG. So DR Sr. is saying bye to Sam, who really is a nice guy, when little DR makes that creepy little-kid-listening-to-a-ghost face and wanders off towards the tracks and an oncoming train. He's already on the tracks, when DR Sr. notices and runs after him. You don't see what happens when the train comes because we're looking at Sam's POV through the train windows, where he can clearly see all seventeen ghost kids standing on the other platform, staring at him like he ruined Christmas. Then the train passes and Sam looks at the tracks like fffuuuuuuuu......
And DR Sr. stands up holding DR Jr., but Sam and the nanny are not on the platform. Also the sky seems to have turned into a ceiling and, as DR Jr. points out, Dead Wife is standing right over there. All three of them wander off together down the tracks. ....What? They're both dead? Hold on a damn minute. DR Sr. did all the things that ought to make this ghost bitch happy and she still hit them both with a train? What an ungrateful ho-bag! Why didn't Dead Wife do something? She was ghosty enough to hang around DR Sr. wearing Crazy Sister's outfit but in white, and didn't do anything for her kid? What a waste of color symbolism! And why didn't DR Jr. go to be a ghost with the other kids? Does he get to go to heaven because his dad also died? What is going on in this movie?
The last shot is of Crazy Sister staring vaguely off to the left, and THEN SHE TURNS HER HEAD TO LOOK RIGHT AT YOU. ....What? That's a terrible shot. What is it supposed to imply? Is she going to kill the audience's kids? Is that just a reminder that she's still around ghosting it up? Because that was obvious when she killed DRs Sr. and Jr. I declare this ending LAME.
The moral of this movie is if you have a crazy relative who hates you, don't keep them in the house. Move to Greece or put them in an institution so they end up haunting some unrelated co-eds in another town entirely. Letting your crazy dead relatives haunt your own village is no way to give back to the community that built a sketchy little road out to your poorly-placed house.
The second moral is if there's a ghost killing kids in your village, move! Find a village without a murderous ghost and move your slow ass there. Don't stick around having more kids for the ghost to kill. Jesus. what a bunch of dumbasses.
movie haiku:
the woman in black
can't get no satisfaction
Radcliffe's lovely face
The opening scene is three little girls wearing identical Victorian black boots with heels. Every kid in this movie is wearing the exact same shoes, wtf? Anyway, they're having a normal tea party until they all get a weird look on their faces and no one can look creepier than a creepy kid. They all get up at once and jump out the attic windows. Dude, that's why they invented child locks.
Then there are about two extremely minimalist scenes of someone getting married. Prooobably Daniel Radcliffe and Dead Wife, judging by the guy's itty bitty little hands. In the present he's shaving and deciding not to cut his throat open with the razor, and sort of sees his dead wife in the mirror behind him but she's not in the room(she's dead!). DR has a cute scene with Daniel Radcliffe Jr., 4, who is sad that DR Sr. is going away. DR Jr. has drawn a cute drawing of DR Sr. getting on a train with a sad face, which is both cute and sad. The drawing is part of a book DR Jr. has put together and the next two days are blank, but on Friday both DRs are together next to a train 'cause Jr. is going to follow Sr. to his destination in three days. Both DRs are way cute in this scene.
Next scene, the "England Prevails!" guy from V for Vendetta is like "Daniel Radcliffe, I'm sorry your wife died but you've been dead weight for four years. Go to the ass end of north England and sort out this widow's house or I'll fire you." So DR gets on a train. He ends up sitting across from a big guy named Sam, or maybe a regular-sized guy named Sam, it's hard to tell because Daniel Radcliffe is so short. The guy ends up giving DR a ride into town in his motor car(!), because Sam is rich, and invites DR to dinner the next day while DR is standing in the pouring rain because that's polite. At the town inn the only room left in the place is the attic, about which the inn owners are like SIGNIFICANT LOOK SIGNIFICANT LOOK SIGNIFICANT LOOK, and it's the attic those three girls jumped out of! Oh no! This has no further bearing on the plot.
The next day, which is Wednesday according to Daniel Radcliffe Jr.'s drawing, Daniel Radcliffe Sr. goes to the local lawyer who's supposed to help with the widow's crap. He's not there but Daniel Radcliffe walks right in anyway like he owns the place and catches Mrs. Jerome bringing a tray of food up from the basement. Mr. Jerome shows up suddenly all "HERE'S ALL THE PAPERWORK FROM THE HOUSE THERE'S A GUY OUT FRONT WITH YOUR STUFF GET ON THE MOTHERFUCKING TRAIN" and Daniel Radcliffe is understandably disinclined to do so. He bribes Carriage Guy with six whole shillings and Carriage Guy takes him to the widow's place, Eel Marsh House. Eel Marsh House is on an island in the middle of a giant, shallow-ass sea, and WHY WOULD ANYONE LIVE THERE? How did they find that island in the first place? How did they build that narrow little road to it? How did they get building materials OUT there on that pathetic little road? But anyway, then Carriage Guy goes "I have come get you at 5:00 because that's when the tide goes back out" and WHO LIVES ON AN ISLAND THAT'S INACCESSIBLE WHEN THE TIDE IS IN? You can't even take a boat there, it's ten inches of water over twelve feet of quickmud! That's not eccentricity, that's dumbassery. Morons! BTW, there's a giant cross ten feet from the road, right by the gate to the house.
So yeah, Carriage Guy leaves Daniel Radcliffe at Eel Marsh House and G's TFO, and DR goes in. The widow supposedly died a month ago but the house looks like no one's lived there for ten years, all vines up the side and everything covered in cobwebs. He hears noises from upstairs because oh yeah, horror movie, and goes exploring. From an upstairs window he sees a woman in mourning clothes out on the lawn, the whole of which is also a graveyard, ew, and goes outside to look. He sees a variety of tombs: the widow's, her kid's, her sister's. DR looks around at the house and THERE'S A LADY STANDING IN THE WINDOW SHE SLAPS THE GLASS AND DISAPPEARS ....yeah, that wasn't very scary. DR goes back in to read some papers (finally) and finds the kid's death certificate. Muddy Dead Kid was seven and drowned in the marsh approximately eight feet from the gates. His body wasn't recovered, I assume due to a lack of effort from all involved because he was TEN FEET FROM THE ROAD. Later DR starts hearing noises from outside where it's become all misty because the area wasn't damp enough already. There are lady screams and horse screams and kid screams and DR takes off running down the road? I guess? it's hard to tell for all the mist. He's shouting at the screaming, and turns around and SUDDENLY THERE'S CARRIAGE GUY who's like ...........let's go.
So back in the village, Daniel Radcliffe is at the constable's station reporting the accident he heard like listen, we better get back out there, someone fell in the mud. The constable, who appears to be 80 years old is like, umm, yeah..... I'll be right back, and he disappears into the back in a manner that makes it clear he's going to hide until DR leaves. So DR is standing there waiting for the guy to come back (he's never coming back), and two kids come in dragging a third between them. She's all pale and horrible looking, and the other kids say that she drank lye because their mom was out. Okay, time out: first of all, who left lye where she could get it? Second of all, WHO DRINKS LYE? Does it taste good? Does it look like milk? Is she dumb enough we should be glad she won't pass on her genes? WTAF. Time in: The girl is like pale, pale, barfs blood, dies in DR's arms. Daniel Radcliffe is like :/
In the next scene, he's standing in front of a mausoleum and it's sunny out, and what day is this that it's sunny at like, 6:00? It must be Wednesday still, 'cause he's at Rich Guy's house for dinner. Sam the Rich Guy is like, my son is buried in that tomb. Also please don't mention Eel Marsh House to my wife, and don't mention children, beaches, or children drowning on beaches. So they go in to dinner and Crazy Wife shows up all smiles. She's like, the twins are gonna eat with us! And the twins: are dogs. In sailor suits. Sam is like, please don't say anything about my crazy wife please don't say anything about my crazy wife please don't say anything about my crazy wife and Daniel Radcliffe makes a face that say whaaa? and then Crazy Wife asks about DR's family and he answers like a moron that he has a son. This gives Crazy Wife the opportunity to point out her two-dimensional painting of Drowned Rich Kid, and she's all "I love to draw. Nathaniel loved to draw too. HE WANTS TO DRAW FOR YOU RIGHT NOW." and she carves the shit out of a really nice table with a steak knife. Sam calls for the butler to dose her up with chloroform, and carries her out of the dining room all sad that his wife is crazy. DR checks out the carving, which is a stick figure hanging itself.
Now I don't remember when this scene happened but let's say it's here. Daniel Radcliffe Sr. is remembering when Daniel Radcliffe Jr. was born. He's hanging out in a hallway outside a closed door, from which are issuing the standard screams of pre-anesthetic childbirth (let's all take a minute to be thankful for modern medicine). There's a lot of screaming and then suddenly no screaming, and a nurse comes out with a baby. "It's a boy," she says, and Daniel Radcliffe has a cute :) Then the doctor, says "I'm so sorry" and lets DR see his dead wife's face real quick before he covers it up with a very bloody sheet. DR is like D: Great bedside manner!
The next day (in the present) DR and Sam are driving in Sam's motor car to Eel Marsh house and they stop at Jerome's house. No one's there except the kid he keeps locked in the basement (!?) and she really doesn't want to talk to DR because she thinks he killed that blood-barfing kid. Also she lives in a locked room in the basement, wtf. On their way out of town all the men in the village, which is six, are blocking the road. They're all, don't go to that house. And DR is all, must go to house. Then Sam is all, we won't go to house just kidding gonna drive by you real fast. Sam leaves DR at the house, where DR intends to work through the night to get this shit done. Sam leaves his plucky little dog for company and drives off. This is where the house haunting gets real.
Daniel Radcliffe reads some expository papers so we learn what's happening. Turns out Muddy Kid who died SIX FEET FROM THE HOUSE was the widow's sister's kid, only the widow and her husband had the sister declared insane and adopted the kid for themselves. Crazy Sister spent seven years writing increasingly illegible letters to them like hey, you assholes, I want my kid, never gonna forgive you, rot in hell satan spawn, you won't even let me talk to him. Time out: you can make that much damn noise as a ghost, but as a living person in the same house with a curious seven-year-old you couldn't attract his attention? Come on now, make an effort. Time in: Crazy Sister is for real unhappy about the situation, and that's before they let her kid drown in the marsh SIX FEET FROM THE HOUSE, and event she witnessed from the upstairs window that she ghost-slapped earlier. She is very adamant that she will never forgive her sister and brother-in-law. There is also a death certificate for her, citing cause of death as "self-murder". How quaint!
Then this weird noise starts upstairs, and it's like CREAK THUMP. CREAK THUMP for about an hour while DR tries to get into the locked room the noise is in. He goes looking for an axe but by the time he comes back the door's wide open, and a giant rocking chair is going full tilt in the middle of the room with nothing to move it! But that stops and one of the 400 creepy fucking toys in the room starts playing creepy tinkling circus music. The room is the nursery and this dead kid had a million little wind-up monkeys with super creepy eyes that play instruments, and what is easily the world's scariest clown doll. This thing has fangs and a forked tongue and no eyelids. Lord have mercy on whoever made that, because they were obviously acting under Beelzebub's direct orders.
Then suddenly DR sees the veiny dead woman hanging herself from the ceiling, hopping off the rocking chair like she's playing jump rope all bouncy and stuff (how do you balance on a rocking chair long enough to hang a noose?) and all of the sudden she's at eye level and rushes him, screaming, and yes, that was scary (the next eighteen times she does it are also surprising, but less original. This seems to be her only trick). So he's like, wtaf, and looks out the window, and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST A LITTLE MUD-COVERED MUDDY KID CLIMBS OUT OF THE BOG RIGHT NEXT TO THE GIANT CROSS that is the wrongest thing I've seen since a Paranormal Activity 2 trailer and this is why I don't see horror movies. The creepy little fucker heads towards the house, walking on the bog like it ain't no thang. Daniel Radcliffe is like O.O, which I get. So he heads downstairs to where the front door doorknob is rattling like crazy and the dog is all BARKBARKBARKBARKBARKBARK and he tries to open the door, which I am less down with.
DR shouts "who's there?", which is hilarious, and Muddy Kid stops rattling the doorknob like shit! he heard me! and DR goes outside in the pouring rain. There's nothing out there but the ghosts of sixteen dead kids, ew, so he runs back in the house to find little muddy footprints headed upstairs. And then he follows them, because in the Victorian age there were no existent ghost stories for him to have read warning him about exactly this kind of behavior. He heads upstairs to the nursery, where if you tear up some ABC wallpaper you will find a nice note written in bright red saying YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM which is totally true, kid was three feet from the road. When DR turns around from reading this cheery note, there's the little mud-covered kid screaming at him! 1) Like crazy mother, like crazy son. 2) Aaaaugh! (Also note that the ABC wallpaper is green, which in Victorian times would have been made of poisonous chemicals. I wonder if Crazy Sister would have been as pissed if the kid had died from wallpaper poisoning?)
DR goes running out of the room and the woman in black is flying at him from the other end of the hall, screaming some more, so he ducks in a room and locks the door. Bad idea though, 'cause it's Muddy Kid's room, and mud starts bubbling up out of the middle of the bed and then something solid starts rising and DR's like I WOULD LIKE TO OPEN THE DOOR UNLOCK UNLOCK UNLOCK and he goes running to the front door which is being knocked on again only this time it's Sam and DR's like .....oh. I guess it's Thursday now? I don't understand the timeline, and it's always overcast so you never know what time it is. Anyway, on the way back into town Sam says I totally don't believe your story, maybe your mind was playing tricks on you. Daniel Radcliffe is thanks for nothing, you unbeliever.
Back in town it turns out Jerome's house is on fire. Whoops! And some dudes are keeping him from running back in, but no one's keeping DR from running in, and he gets all the way downstairs just to see the woman in black standing there as Jerome Jr. dumps lamp oil over herself. What is she, protesting the occupation of her country? Anyway, she dead. DR and Sam go back to Sam's house for a nap, 'cause it's been a doozy of a day.
Later that day, when it's sunny ('cause they filmed both these scenes on the one sunny day of production) DR's chillin' in front of Drowned Rich Kid's tomb when Crazy Wife comes up to tell him that whenever someone sees Crazy Sister a kid dies, because apparently that was not obvious to him. Then Crazy Wife gets semi-possessed by all the dead kids and starts speaking in that We Are Legion voice I don't like, telling about how the woman in black made Drowned Rich Kid and a buddy walk right into the sea in their Victorian Little Kid Black Boots(TM). Crazy Sister, aka the woman in black, kills kids as revenge for her dead kid. Duh. Then Crazy Wife picks a sharp rock up off the ground and carves a picture on a flat part of the mausoleum, and Sam comes up and his wife Legions at him and then she faints and he is like Crazy Wife, I love you and I wish you weren't so cra-cra. DR meanwhile is checking out the pic on the tomb and oh shit! It's the same as DR Jr.'s Friday picture showing him and DR Sr. by the train! Looks like Daniel Radcliffe Jr. is next on Crazy Sister's shit list.
This convinces DR to get down to business, and he takes Sam, who's a believer now, down to the giant cross to dig up the muddy dead kid. Sam's all they never recovered the body! Too muddy! And DR's like we have something they didn't! A car! So DR ties himself to the car and wades out to the giant cross, which is still only ten feet from the road and wow, but that bog is muddy. He gets to the cross and realizes that the carriage that sunk is just under his feet, so he dives down to tie the rope to it and hold on:
They knew where the carriage went down because there were three survivors, so they knew where the dead kid was. They had the means to put a giant cross up on the other side of the sunken carriage. But they couldn't dive six feet to drag the kid out? What kind of half-assed people were these? Crazy Sister could have dove in there and dragged the kid out by herself. Icould have done it with one leg! What a bunch of lazy bitches.
But yeah, DR ties the rope to the carriage and Sam starts backing that shit up, and eventually he drags the carriage out of the mud enough so DR can retrieve Muddy Kid's body. Inside the house, they clean off the kid and wrap him in a sheet and you know, wouldn't twenty years in the mud decompose him more than that? No? Fine. Let's all take a good long look at his green face. DR puts the kid in the nursery and surrounds him with the birthday cards he never got from his crazy mother so their ghosts can meet up (is that how that works?) and DR winds up everything single creepy toy, including the world's scariest clown. Meanwhile, Sam is downstairs and sees a thing moving over there! so he checks out this little room at the back of the house and it's Drowned Rich Kid! Who's like 'sup, and then locks Sam in the room. Why, I do not know, because nothing comes of it. But I guess while DR's letting Sam out, Muddy Kid has the chance to track muddy little footprints up to the nursery. When DR goes back to investigate, Crazy Sister screams at him again. That seems to be what DR was looking for so he and Sam break into Crazy Sister's grave and put Muddy Kid's body in there. Yay, closure.
By then it's.... Friday? And Sam and DR go into town to telegraph DR Jr. and his nanny not to come 'cause this is a fucked-up little burg, but the telegraph station has burned down. That's no good. And there's a blipvert of Crazy Sister's various grudge fodder and she yells I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU for the millionth time, so that's not a good sign either, 'cause this ghost ought to be friggin' satisfied already. DR and Sam get to the train station and there's DR Jr. and they hug and it's cute, and DR Sr. is like NANNY PLEASE GET SOME TICKETS BACK TO LONDON. WE ARE NOT STAYING IN THIS FUCKED-UP LITTLE BURG. So DR Sr. is saying bye to Sam, who really is a nice guy, when little DR makes that creepy little-kid-listening-to-a-ghost face and wanders off towards the tracks and an oncoming train. He's already on the tracks, when DR Sr. notices and runs after him. You don't see what happens when the train comes because we're looking at Sam's POV through the train windows, where he can clearly see all seventeen ghost kids standing on the other platform, staring at him like he ruined Christmas. Then the train passes and Sam looks at the tracks like fffuuuuuuuu......
And DR Sr. stands up holding DR Jr., but Sam and the nanny are not on the platform. Also the sky seems to have turned into a ceiling and, as DR Jr. points out, Dead Wife is standing right over there. All three of them wander off together down the tracks. ....What? They're both dead? Hold on a damn minute. DR Sr. did all the things that ought to make this ghost bitch happy and she still hit them both with a train? What an ungrateful ho-bag! Why didn't Dead Wife do something? She was ghosty enough to hang around DR Sr. wearing Crazy Sister's outfit but in white, and didn't do anything for her kid? What a waste of color symbolism! And why didn't DR Jr. go to be a ghost with the other kids? Does he get to go to heaven because his dad also died? What is going on in this movie?
The last shot is of Crazy Sister staring vaguely off to the left, and THEN SHE TURNS HER HEAD TO LOOK RIGHT AT YOU. ....What? That's a terrible shot. What is it supposed to imply? Is she going to kill the audience's kids? Is that just a reminder that she's still around ghosting it up? Because that was obvious when she killed DRs Sr. and Jr. I declare this ending LAME.
The moral of this movie is if you have a crazy relative who hates you, don't keep them in the house. Move to Greece or put them in an institution so they end up haunting some unrelated co-eds in another town entirely. Letting your crazy dead relatives haunt your own village is no way to give back to the community that built a sketchy little road out to your poorly-placed house.
The second moral is if there's a ghost killing kids in your village, move! Find a village without a murderous ghost and move your slow ass there. Don't stick around having more kids for the ghost to kill. Jesus. what a bunch of dumbasses.
movie haiku:
the woman in black
can't get no satisfaction
Radcliffe's lovely face