The Woman in Black

B. and I hit up the 8.30 Woman in Black showing last night...and ended up buying wine and chocolate and then watching Star Wars instead of falling asleep. It was that scary. And so good!

For those who don't know, when my parents and I were here in London back when I was 13 (that 12-day period when I fell in love with London and promised myself I'd be back), one of the three plays we saw in the West End was The Woman in Black. It was a two-man play with about three props, in a small theatre, with stark lighting, fog machines, and a terrifying finale. There are about three things I remember about that experience: the three boxes being used as all sorts of props, the rocking chair scene, and not being able to get to sleep the next few nights. The DanRad film kept two of those three things; the only difference was the background, it being an actual film and all.

I made a list whilst watching The Phantom Menace last night: (Spoilers, sweetie!)

+ Surprise Roger Allam in the beginning! And Ciaran Hinds, who played a rather major character! Oh, England, land of the twelve British actors who are in everything together...

+ Surprise Arthur Conan Doyle reference, which made me squee. Though known mostly for his logic-loving detective, towards the end (middle?) of his life, ACD became a huge proponent of spiritualism, that phenomenon that gripped the late 1800s that included mediums, seances, and ghosts of all kinds.

+ We should bring back frock coats. DanRad looks really good in a frock coat. I really like frock coats.

+ There were many times when I just sat there grinning like an idiot because it was fun getting scared. This is a relatively new development for me. Late high school, maybe. I never really liked horror movies (I now like real horror movies, not gore) or haunted houses (I still don't like haunted houses), but once I started watching things like Supernatural and Buffy, I began to see the value of it.

+ Mind, there were a few times in the middle when my tummy knotted and I went "Oh, that's not fun anymore. Stop it." This is the mark of a great scary movie. Another great mark is scaring me so much I couldn't fall asleep because the big empty house (no wonder B. wanted me to stay over; she was the only one alone in the creepy, creaky house) was making noises and the curtains were open and the fear gripped me. I can't explain it, but I felt like The Woman was there in the window behind me and so I curled up in a little ball and actively had to tell my brain to not open my eyes.

What you don't see is always scarier than what you do see, except when your self-preservation instinct tells you if you don't see it, it can't hurt you. This is not a particularly good self-preservation technique, but it's what my tired, sluggish, fearful instinct told me. I would be hopeless on my own in the wild.

+ The rocking chair scene is basically all I remembered from the play and was bloody terrifying in the movie. If you can guess, it's a scene where the empty rocking chair upstage on the set (upstairs in the film) starts rocking. By itself. Only in the film, from the back there's no one in it, but when it cuts to the upswing in front of the chair, The Woman is there. Just for a split second.

+ The scariest elements of a good scary story are not to be found in gore. But I love the elements that made this movie. Suspense, seeing things out of the corner of your eye, mirrors (mirrors are the scariest bloody things in scary movies), shadows, expecting the unexpected. You know something is coming and you're on the lookout; you're trained by either instinct or the preponderance of horror films to look anywhere but the main character's face. For instance, DanRad has very pretty eyes, but when there are close-ups on his face in the darkened house, you're not looking at his bright blue eyes. You're glaring at the shadows behind his head, to the right of the screen, because was there a flicker of candlelight? Was that movement or just the camera work? Is there something there? Ugh, so creepy and so good.

+ There's something so wonderful about getting scared. There is so much to be analyzed and written on cinema-goers at a horror film. Every single time something scary happened, everyone jumped (and/or screamed) and then laughed. Nervous laughter. (See also: when someone sneezed really loudly during a tense scene and everyone started giggling.) It's the release. Adrenaline? Endorphins, maybe? To be researched. But there really is something delicious about slowly sinking into the feeling, letting your guard down enough to be scared.

+ I like old things and broken-down things, cemeteries and weeping angels, and the beauty of stark countryside. Broken trees in winter, that sort of thing. And this movie is full of that. Exists on that aesthetic, actually.

+ Between this movie, A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss and the Criminal Minds episode that was on when we got back to the house...what is with the death of a child in horror/drama? Fascinating. So much could be written on that, too.

+ I forgot it wasn't a happy ending. Or, well, a traditional happy ending, anyway.

+ DanRad is a great actor and I'm so glad he's turned out to be far more than a one-trick wizard. BUT. Because he's Harry and my age and I know he's only 21...I don't buy him having a four year old son and a dead wife. That's the only problem I had with that casting. He was excellent otherwise, though.