The Woman In Black
In the Edwardian era, in a small British town, three little girls are playing tea party. Suddenly they look up and see something (off-screen), then get up and walk in a trance-like state to the window and jump out to their deaths. In London Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a penniless lawyer and the widowed father of four-year-old Joseph, is charged by his office to obtain the paperwork with which to sell a large manor – the bleak, isolated and desolate Eel Marsh House. Though he is hesitant to leave his son alone with a nanny, Arthur's boss warns him that if he fails to complete his duty he will lose his job.
Arthur is treated coldly upon his arrival and is barely able to get a room for the night, but he meets a kind local man named Samuel Daily (Ciaran Hinds) and his wife Elisabeth (Janet Mc Teer) who allow him to stay at their home. Arthur visits his legal contact, Mr Jerome, who hurries him off with a stack of papers, telling him to return to London. Instead, Arthur pays the coachman to take him to Eel Marsh House, where he feels he will be able to more thoroughly complete his work. While there he is distracted by odd noises, footsteps and finally a brief appearance by a woman dressed in black. Arthur then hears a commotion in Eel Marsh, and runs out only to find his coachman waiting for him. As Arthur reports the incident to the police, three children come into the station; two boys carrying their very pale little sister who had just drank Iye. She subsequently collapses in Arthur's arms and dies. That night, Sam reveals that he and his wife lost their son in a drowning accident, and Elisabeth – who has lost her mind with grief – carves a figure into the table of someone being hanged before she is sedated by Sam and their butler.
The next day Arthur decides to stay the night at Eel Marsh House to finish his work, and discovers letters from Alice Drablow, the home's recently deceased owner, and her mentally disturbed sister Jennet Humfrye (Liz White). Jennet claims Alice stole her son Nathaniel away from her and demands to let her see him. In subsequent letters it is revealed the boy drowned in the marsh and that Jennet blamed Alice before committing suicude. Toys begin making noise upstairs in Nathaniel's room, where Arthur witnesses the spirit of the Woman in Black. The next day, Arthur learns that the deaths are the work of Jennet, who is the Woman in Black, and cursed the town after her child was taken from her. Elisabeth then indicates that Joseph, who is being brought to the town by his nanny the next day, is a target for the Woman in Black. In an attempt to lift the curse, Arthur decides to reunite Nathaniel and Jennet by finding the boy's body in the marsh with Sam's help. They place his corpse in the Eel Marsh House, where Jennet finds him lying in his planned nursery bed and it appears to Arthur that she is satisfied. However, she is unable to hold him, presumably because he doesn't feel the same connection. Arthur and Sam then place Jennet's son in the grave with her before covering it back up.
The next night, Joseph and Arthur are reunited and intend on immediately returning to London, but Joseph slips away while Arthur and Sam are busy talking. Arthur soon notices the Woman in Black on the other side of the station, and Joseph walking along the train tracks under her command, and it becomes apparent that the curse will never be lifted. Arthur leaps onto the tracks in an attempt to save Joseph from an oncoming train. As Sam looks on, he glimpses in the windows of the train the faces of all the children the Woman in Black has taken. In horror, he gasps and looks away. Once the train passes, Arthur calls out to Sam, but he and the nanny are gone and everything around them is dark. Joseph asks, "Who's that lady?" Arthur looks and sees a glowing blonde woman in a white dress standing on the tracks, and smiles before responding, "That's your Mummy." Stella Kipps takes the hand of her husband and the family disappears into the fog and darkness as Jennet, silently sobbing, looks at them with envy. Just as the film ends, her face slowly pivots towards the audience as the screen turns to black.
The next movie will be discussed in the next post. :D
