Saturday, August 25, 2012

The Woman in Black Sequels

The recent Hammer film The Woman in Black was a massive hit for the resurrected horror studio, earning approximately $130 Million in box office alone from a modest $15 Million budget. So naturally they’re anxious to try to replicate this success with a sequel. From what I understand, a sequel of sorts (tentatively titled The Woman in Black: Angels of Death) is already in the works, with the haunted mansion Eel Marsh House from the previous movie being the locale for a makeshift military hospital during wartime, and our titular menace providing scares and stuff, I think. But is this really the best way to go here? I think another direction might have been a better idea, using the original setup again, but with a new twist to keep it fresh and zeitgeisty with social commentary.

Here’s my conception of an appropriate sequel for The Woman in Black: As we all know, the eponymous mourning-wearing ghost lady likes to kill children in the village where she, um, lives (?), and works as the local haunted attraction. Our story would begin in the present day. The reputation of the village for being so fatal to kids is kept as much of a secret as possible, but word has gotten out to a minimal degree. Most of the original families have moved away from the village, but there are still some people (adults) living there, as it’s in such a picturesque locale. But as rumors of the village’s ghost spread, some families with extreme problem children hear about it, and at the end of their wits from their children’s outrageous delinquency, they threaten to move there in the hopes that they can scare their kids into behaving themselves. Unfortunately, these kids are so used to getting away with anything and everything, what with spanking being considered child abuse, and any time any parent yells at their child, someone videos it on their cell phone and posts it online as a public shaming (and then the parent gets charged with child abuse), these children have become completely spoiled and convinced that nobody will ever be able to punish them for anything. So, dismissing the threats of moving in such a bratty and insolent way, all of these tortured parents, reaching the end of their ropes, snap and decide to move to Crythin Gifford, secretly hoping the Woman in Black will kill their horrible delinquent children before they do.

So all of the aforementioned families move to Crythin Gifford around the same time, and it isn’t long before their unruly brats form gangs and terrorize the town, violently attacking everyone, torturing animals, spraying graffiti everywhere, robbing everyone’s homes and businesses, sexually assaulting each other, etc. And any time anyone tries to discipline the children, the kids claim it’s child abuse and that person gets arrested. Well, all of this activity has caused something to stir in the Eel Marsh House across the causeway… Yes, it’s the Woman in Black: she hears the voices and activity of children, and she comes to get her revenge on the town! Oh, but once in the town, and after witnessing a taste of the absolute pandemonium these awful hooligan kids have unleashed upon this unsuspecting formerly peaceful hamlet, she decides that the far worse punishment would be to let these children live, rather than killing them, so she does not kill the kids, delivering unbearable shock and horror to the entire adult population of the town. And the children taunt their parents, saying: “See? I told you nobody’s allowed to punish us!”, and they become worse delinquents than ever. The Woman in Black has had her revenge once again! The End.

Then, if this movie is a success (or even if it’s a failure, but they want to make another sequel to cash in on the original movie), they could make a further sequel: The Woman in Black’s Dog. (Someone made a movie called Dracula’s Dog once, so why not this?) So here’s how this movie would work:

As we see in the film The Woman in Black, one family copes with the loss of their son by getting two little Paris Hilton-style lap dogs and dressing them up and treating them like children. So, in this sequel, it’s a few years after the events of the first movie, and more and more families have lost their children to the wrath of the Woman in Black’s vengeful spirit, and seeing as how well the toy dogs have worked as surrogate children for other mourning parents, everyone else decides to do this as well, adopting dogs to serve as replacement children to assuage their loss and loneliness. So what happens now is that we find out that the Woman in Black actually had a faithful dog, and it knew about how heartbroken its owner was, and how much she still wants to get revenge on the townsfolk (and it knows she committed suicide, and so it wants revenge on the townsfolk as well), but with all the children now dead, she can’t hurt them anymore, because she’s only allowed to kill children, or something. So anyway, her dog, knowing how much his loving owner the Woman in Black still wants to get revenge and stuff, and realizing that the little toy dogs are what the parents of the village love now, the Woman in Black’s dog rises from the grave as a ghost dog (a big spooky black Great Dane), and he haunts and kills all the dogs in the village, making everyone horrified and miserable again, and making the Woman in Black proud. The End.

And then, if this movie is a success, the townspeople could replace their dead dogs with kittens, and then it could turn out that the Woman in Black also had a cat, and…

(And maybe the next movie could be with goldfish, and then hamsters, and then pet rocks, etc.)

BTW: I actually like kids. I just enjoy making fun of the new hippie child-rearing policies of no punishment allowed for really bad behavior, because kids are really smart, and they learn quickly that they can get away with almost anything when there’s no punishment allowed.