The Woman in Black
Earlier this year, this movie was released and while others said it was okay, I praised it as being a new horror classic, and most of it had to do with how this specter was shown. Her backstory is that she had a child out of wed lock and her sister adopted the boy immediately after the boy was born to avoid any potential scandals. However she was prevented from seeing her son and vowed revenge on her sister after the boy was killed in an accident in which he drowned in the marsh surrounding the house. The mother died soon after, only to come back as a vengeful ghost that haunted her sister to her dying day and continues to terrorize the townspeople by taking their children in the most dreadful ways. In the novel, they would die through some insane accident. In the movie, which I said this was an improvement in that it was much more chilling, she puts the children in a trance and forces them to commit suicide in a manner that looks like an accident, such as wading into waters with a strong tide, or dropping a gas lamp at their own feet, even swallowing lye. The other creepy part is when we see her standing with the souls of the children that she has claimed standing around her, implying that once she has driven them to the grave, she isn't finished with them, she holds onto them. Normally, in stories like this, we find out that she cares for the children like they were her own, being that she took them to fill the whole in her heart left there by her son. Not in this case. Being that this is a dark spirit, and a pissed off, vengeful one at that, I don't think she is making the afterlife a picnic for those poor children. And finally, I have to talk about the ending. Sorry if I am spoiling this for anyone, but I do feel that this is an important part of my analysis. In the end, the young attorney that pieces together her story comes to the conclusion that if he were to lay the body of her son in her grave next to her, maybe she would be at piece and would feel less inclined to take the life of his own son. Well, after all that, she still decides to try and claim his son as her own, trancing him to walk in front of a train. Some people have seen that as her saying "You reunited me with my son, so I'm going to reunite you and your son with your wife who died in childbirth". Others have seen it as the ghost is still pissed and still vengeful and sees his efforts as him giving her the finger and is going to take his son for meddling in her affairs. I'm more willing to side with this conclusion because it goes along better with the ending in the book. People have said that she is just being a bitch because he still tried and even if his efforts didn't work, she is still out of line to say the least. But the thing you have to remember is, she isn't human anymore, and on top of that, she came back out of hatred and anger. If that is all that governed her when she was alive, there isn't much chance she'll be motivated by much else after death. In her years as a ghost, she's probably forgotten what compassion and forgiveness feel like. Keep in mind, there isn't anything compassionate about killing children and sheoparding their souls in the hereafter.
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