oh my blog!- Laura Darby Singh -

MEGA SPOILERS AHEAD. BEWAREZ.

I should preface this by saying that I am not a connoisseur of scary movies. I nearly leap out of my skin at your average Doctor Who episode, and I consider “Silence of the Lambs” to be nearly too scary.

But I love Harry Potter, and I was curious to see what Daniel Radcliffe could do since I “missed out” on seeing him <s>naked</s> in Equus while it was in New York, and I’m not a big enough masochist to go to see How to Succeed in Business without really Trying. Then I see the previews for “Woman in Black” and hey, I can tolerate a scary movie for DRad, right?

Until my best friend Lauren told me that she’d seen the play version of Woman in Black in London, and that it haunted her, even 13 years after viewing. I asked her what could have been so bad: did everyone die?  And she said that the ending was WORSE than death.  What could be worse than death?  I know it isn’t cake! Her chilling tale gave me pause — what, exactly, had I signed up for?

I decided to go to a 10pm showing at the local Alamo Drafthouse, because they sell you tasty food and drink, and how scary can a movie be if I’m getting to eat fried pickles during it?

The previews should have been warning enough. Previews are built around expected target audiences, so they’re a good portent for whether you’re going to enjoy a movie because it will be pandering to you.  So when the previews are clearly not for squealish girls who are just there to see Harry Potter be Spooky, and instead are about terrible horror clichés like DEATH-FILLED-CABINS in the woods, I knew I was in trouble.

The beginning of the movie was all setup, and the premise is that Harry Potter is some sort of accountant or lawyer or something who likes ascots, and has a four year old son and a dead wife. I can buy him as an ascot-lover, but he is still only four feet tall, and looks four years old himself, so the four year old son is a bit of a stretch.

But he is emo and sad, like you are when your wife is dead, and he’s had tons of practice being sad during the last couple Harry Potter films. But now he’s also BROKE and in trouble at work. This part of the movie is where they try to elicit sympathy and understanding from their audience. Hey guys who like horror movies! Wouldn’t it suck to be a single dad AND have a crappy job that you’re bad at?! Wouldn’t you do ANYTHING to fix that? Including make HORRIBLE decisions?

Which of course is meant to excuse and/or justify rest of the movie.

Harry Potter travels out to the moors of rural England (where we know anything can happen) and he arrives at a very remote, rainy, and unfriendly town.  Everyone tells him to leave in the least subtle ways possible, like saying “Leave now or else” and he stays because he has to support his son! Like dads do. <insert empathy here>

Even though the first third of the movie isn’t overly scary, it sets up a scenario of doom pretty solidly, and DRad is good at being tersely determined and haggard-looking. There’s some vomiting of blood, some dead children, some rioting townsfolk who are too distraught to even find their pitchforks, and some serious Mystery™. Even though there were no mega-jumpy moments, I still managed to get scared enough in the middle of a drink of my Woodchuck Hard Cider to spill it down the front of my dress.  …maybe seeing this film at the Alamo Drafthouse wasn’t as good an idea as I’d previously thought.

DRad’s first visit to the Ghost House goes poorly, of course. He’s there to sort through a dead lady’s paperwork, and when you get into the house you wonder why they didn’t call the Hoarders team instead of Harry Potter.  He’s supposed to be looking for… well, we’re not really sure, but he spends a lot of his time sorting through piles of old birthday cards.

Plot exposition via stationery: check! Hallmark would be so proud.

The house itself is in the middle of a bog of mud, and during certain hours it’s inaccessible because the tides come up over the road and then you’re stuck.  Why would anyone build a house here?

“Oh, honey, we need to get milk for the baby!”

“TOO BAD the road is gone! <sad trombone> Can we wait until 11pm when the tides recede?”

It also has a cemetery, because of course it does, and instead of working on his super important papers, Harry Potter has to go explore it along with the rest of the house.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Harry Potter and the Procrastinator’s Stone! If he had just worked instead of mucking about with dead girls, maybe then this would be a much different movie.

Because like many horror movies, his exploring ires a DEAD WET GIRL.  And if I’ve learned anything from The Grudge, The Ring, or Gothika, there is nothing WORSE than a Dead Angry Wet Girl.

Dead Angry Wet Girl hates children. She murders them in the now-justifiably unfriendly town. Now of course, if I lived in Murder Babytown, I’d move but there are still some willing fools with children who live there that she can murder the shit out of.  And she does.

Harry Potter NEEDS to finish his paperwork (or else he will lose his job — so of course he needs to be SRS about his WORK) so he decides that he is going to spend the night in haunted ghost house so he can finish up. Now, it doesn’t actually seem like he works at all, with all the exploring and bad decisions he makes.

Hey, how about hanging out in this room filled with a creepy old bathtub? Ya! Nothing bad ever happens in horror movies when baths are involved!

Hey, I saw an apparition of a zombie baby coming from the mud and now there’s a knock at the door! Should I answer the door? SURE!

OMG, no one was at the door? But there are ghosts of babies in the cemetery? Should I run in there?  HELL YEA! Cemeteries are the new black!

Now I’m scared, and I’m running back into the house and there are muddy baby’s footprints heading up the stairs.  Should I follow them?  OMG yes.

Fried pickles could not save me from the sheer terror that anyone could be so dumb.

HARRY POTTER AND THE SERIES OF SUCCESSIVELY STUPIDER CHOICES

And if you think it’s just some deficiency from being Harry Potter, no.  Don’t forget the inhabitants of Murder Babytown, who continue to live there, angrily.  But there is also a couple who had a baby that the Dead Angry Wet Girl MURDERED, and then they STAYED in Murder Babytown, and had another baby. Darwin Awards, here they come!

Harry’s new friend Dopey also had a dead baby, and he and his wife stayed in Murder Babytown too. And then got Chihuahuas and dressed them up in baby clothing and let them eat at the dinner table and cooed them to bed like babies. I TOLD YOU. THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE. Just watch out – if the Dead Angry Wet Girl runs out of children, your dogs are totes next.

Anyway, Harry manages to survive the night, and decides that the BEST option will be to dig up the Dead Angry Wet Girl’s baby from the mud so that he can reunite her and I dunno, make her less angry? Expecting dead ladies to be rational is probably the LEAST stupid thing he’s done.

There is a big climactic scene where he calls out the Dead Angry Wet Girl, and she reveals her Spooky Face, and makes a lot of banshee noises, and then goes poof.  Oh, wow, his plan worked, right? She’s gonna stop killing babeez now, right?

You might be left wondering for a while, sitting on the edge of your seat. Because you know, nothing better than inviting your son to come and visit you in Murder Babytown, but DRad totally did!!  So his son is EN ROUTE.  His plan better have worked!

I didn’t even get a second to wonder because, as DRad and his dopey companion are leaving the Most Unsellable House Ever™, we get some hackneyed zooming into the stack of birthday cards and a spooky voice-over saying, “NEVER FORGIVE! NEVER FORGIVE!”

Well gee, that answers THAT question.

Cue DRad’s son’s arrival, and, while he is at the train station with Harry who is negotiating a hasty exit from Murder Babytown, babyHarry wanders into the train tracks, inspired by the Dead Angry Wet Girl Who Never Forgives. But oh no! This is platform 9¾!! Watch out!  DRad jumps into the tracks, and BOOM! Will he have moved fast enough?

I wondered then about Lauren’s warning: an ending WORSE than everyone dying.  I mean, what could be worse than being run over by the Hogwarts Express?

The answer is clear: having everyone dying be painted as a Happy Ending. Oh look! Now DRad is reunited with his dead wife, and his son gets to meet her, and they wander off together into the ghost sunset! Yay?

So not only is everything “back to normal,” now with Dead Harry, but the Dead Angry Wet Girl is still Dead, Angry, and Wet and murdering the babies people keep insisting on birthing in Murder Babytown. Even WORSE, the crazy wife of Dopey, Harry’s companion, will STILL be dressing up Chihuahuas and putting them in cribs and treating them like children.  WITHOUT REPERCUSSION! That’s the scariest thought.

If I was already dead, I’d think about having a Showdown! with the Dead Angry Wet Girl and maybe punch her in her ghost boob (an idea which I may have stolen). What’s she gonna do? Kill me again?

I asked Lauren after I saw this film why exactly the play was so scary, and she said that you never see the Woman in Black, just see the fallout and trauma of many dead children.  And then, at the end, she is REVEALED and you’re convinced she’s going to come at your children that you haven’t even had yet.  That DOES sound scarier.

All I ended up with was a lap full of Woodchuck and a resounding fear of Dog Ladies.