Forty years after Arthur Kipps (played by Daniel Radcliffe in the first film, The Woman in Black) left, this supernatural horror film introduces this new group to the now-abandoned Eel Marsh House; an odd, but seemingly safe, location.
When a group of orphaned children are forced to move from their home in London, caretakers Eve (Phoebe Fox) and Jean (Helen McCrory) bring everyone to the desolate and eerie British countryside. It isn't long before Eve starts to sense that this house is not what it appears to be as the children in her care begin to disappear. As their house of safety becomes a house of horrors, Eve enlists the help of a handsome pilot (Jeremy Irvine) to help investigate what is happening. Eve soon discovers that it may not be a coincidence that she has come to reside in the house inhabited by the Woman in Black.
Already a best-selling book and a record-breaking play, The Woman In Black became a worldwide smash-hit film in 2012 when it was brought to the big screen by Talisman and Hammer. Simon Oakes, CEO and President of Hammer, said: "For Hammer, The Woman in Black was an exciting prospect because we had wanted to explore different kinds of horror and recognised a great opportunity to combine Susan Hill's gothic ghost story with a modern sensibility on the big screen."
Hammer Films is notorious for producing some of the most genre-defining pictures in horror: Dracula, One Million Years BC, and The Vampire Lovers. Most recently, they have reached audiences with The Quiet Ones.
"We were delighted with the success of the first film but had always seen The Woman in Black as more than one film," says Simon Oakes, "and ahead of its release I had approached Susan about continuing the story." Two months later, Susan presented an idea that picks up the narrative over 40 years later - during the Second World War.
Richard Jackson, producer on the film, adds that "Susan's inspiration for our new story came from her witnessing the abandoned airfields of East Anglia, and marrying the wartime elements with her vision for The Woman In Black. We all loved this bold narrative step, keeping just the core elements of the myth, the ghost and the setting, and moving on in time. We chose Jon Croker as screenwriter to adapt the new story because he responded so strongly to this concept."
Brought on board to flesh out the idea was screenwriter Jon Croker, who had previously worked as a story editor on the first film. "I'd read the book as a teenager, was very familiar with the play and I'd been a big fan of Susan's work and that world in particular," he says. They had a brief meeting, where they chatted over his ideas to expand her premise. "After that, she left me alone to create my own thing."
From the outset, The Woman In Black 2: Angel of Death was always going to be driven by a female lead, a huge difference from the original male-led story. "With a female protagonist, it's more in keeping with the traditions of this sort of movie, if you think of The Innocents, The Others, The Orphanage, or Rosemary's Baby," says producer Ben Holden. Here we have Eve, a young teacher who arrives with a group of evacuated children from London to Eel Marsh House, the primary setting in Hill's original and the resting place for the malevolent ghost, The Woman In Black.
Those familiar with Hill's original work will remember the backstory of The Woman In Black: the unmarried Jennet Humfrye had a son, but was forced to give him up to her sister, Alice Drablow, with the family drenched in scandal. The boy, named Nathaniel, later drowned in an accident, as Humfrye watched helplessly from a window in Eel Marsh House. After Humfrye kills herself, she then returns as the vengeful ghost - "a manifestation of all of Jennet Humfrye's negative emotions," as Croker puts it.
"At the end of the original film, The Woman In Black is still around," Croker adds. "She will never forgive, she will never forget; following her, and seeing her from a different perspective, is what interested me." Croker's script doesn't dive too much into backstory in an effort to retain an aura of mystery "You don't want to do too much; if you do, you risk humanising her or making her not a force of nature." Rather, he sets out to draw parallels with Eve. "There is a similarity in their back-stories that to me felt interesting."
Producer Tobin Armbrust adds that "we spent a good deal of time discussing the mythology and mechanics of The Woman in Black herself. In the first film she is more reserved, statelier in her movements. In this script we wanted to expand her range of motion, allowing her to move quicker, touch things, crawl. Overall Tom Harper and Jon Croker have used it to great effect".
One of the first ideas Croker had was to make the village of Crythin Gifford, where Eel Marsh House is set, deserted. "There's a village in real life in Dorset that was abandoned during the Second World War because the Ministry of Defence claimed the land, and this village is still perfectly preserved. You can go into the schoolroom there and the children's names are still written on the coat pegs. No one died in this village but it's just so creepy. So I decided Crythin Gifford should be like that, because it makes it a new kind of scary space."
Producers Simon Oakes, Ben Holden, Richard Jackson and Tobin Armbrust worked with Croker on his early drafts, and then it was time to bring a director in. Tom Harper was a distinct and very apt choice. "Tom does have a fairly distinctive style. It is very fresh and very real," says Holden. "But he's quite diverse in terms of what he's done - if you think of Misfits, This Is England, Peaky Blinders and also his film The Scouting Book For Boys. It is quite dynamic as a résumé; he's very, very prolific, very good with actors and very savvy in terms of his craft, because of all that experience he's got."
Oakes was confident Harper was the right choice to continue The Woman in Black story. "Like Watkins, he's fiercely intelligent and completely knows what he wants. The last thing you need is a director who is a bit unsure of himself. Tom is completely self-contained; we wanted somebody who was going to be his own man. He was not going to be like, 'I'm making a sequel' but rather, 'I'm making a new movie.'"
One of the scariest aspects of the film's premise is that eight evacuee children arrive directly into The Woman In Black's lair. As the haunting rhyme goes in the film: "Whenever she's seen, and whoever by/one thing's certain, a child shall die." Harper says that "Because there are children on the island, there is more jeopardy. So immediately there is more at stake. The death of a child is one of our biggest fears. I suppose what it's really about is the fear of loss, which is why it chimes so beautifully with the Second World War. It's the horror of the time."
"The film is filled with all sorts of scares, supernatural and otherwise. That said, the last 40 minutes grab you by the throat and never stop squeezing," says Armbrust. "The tension is unbelievable."
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