Hammer Horror's take on The Woman In Black is released in Australian cinemas this Thursday (May 17). It was a film I'd really been looking forward to, as I'm a big fan of the 1989 telemovie. I first saw it when it was shown on Australian TV in the early 90s and it really stayed with me. (Notice I avoided saying it haunted me.)
Written by Nigel Kneale (who also wrote seminal British genre telly such as Quatermass and The Stone Tape), it's a deeply atmospheric, chilling ghost story. A young lawyer, Arthur Kidd, is sent to a remote seaside town to tidy up a deceased estate. The estate in question includes a spooky old house built in the middle of a treacherous moor. The house is only accessible when the tide is out, so Kidd finds himself trapped on a tiny island with a malevolent spirit. While dealing with things that go bump in the night, he begins to unravel the grim mystery of the titular spook.
In the vein of the equally splendid M.R. James adaptations, it's a film that's more effective because little actually happens. We catch glimpses of The Woman In Black, but Kneale ensures she keeps her distance until we're already scared out of our wits. When she finally confronts Kidd, it's quite unbearably frightening.
Indeed, when I was a teacher, I taught a unit on Ghost Stories to a class of Year 11 girls. As part of the course, I showed them the film. I was worried they'd be a bit sniffy, given the film was 20 years old. Instead, they were entranced. At the scariest moment, I found myself confronted by a theatre full of 60 teenagers screaming "turn it off, turn it off!" Job done, I thought.
The latest adaptation, which I reviewed for The Weekly Review, is nowhere near as effective. It relies far more on starts and shocks than creeping dread. While this leads to a bit of bouncing about in one's seat, each new shock has less impact than the last. As a result, the viewer feels tricked, rather than genuinely terrified.
I don't know what it is about ghost stories that I find so powerful. I'm a thoroughly rational, sceptical bloke, really. But I think ghost stories appealed to my young mind because they were, in effect, about imagination (and memory) intruding on real life. They are, of course, set in the real world, but a version of it where the terrors we imagine in the shadows really do reach out to grab us.
As a boy, I spent hours in the local library, devouring real life tales of hauntings with absolute relish. Maybe I wanted (and, equally, feared) to believe that life could be more exciting. That it could have secrets.
This, I think, is a theme that runs through all my fiction. In Fire In The Sea, Sadie is a teenager growing up in the same small town that I grew up in, wishing life was more thrilling. In Salmon & Dusk, Theo goes to London, hoping to find a more interesting side of life. In both cases, the characters find what they're looking for.
It's important to me that stories start somewhere recognisably real, before taking the reader somewhere unexpected. Ghost stories, by their nature, tend to start very close to home. Indeed, there's nothing more terrifying than the thought that, lying in bed, we might not be as alone in our dark room as we had thought.
If you're inspired to give ghostly tales a go, I'd skip the latest version of The Woman In Black. If you can track down the original (now out-of-print, sadly), do so. The BBC have also released two radio adaptations, the most recent of which was excellent. You could even read Susan Hill's original novel (although I think Kneale did a great job at extrapolating on its loose threads).
The BBC adaptations of M.R. James's Ghost Stories are, thankfully, much easier to find. Shock recently released the complete collection on DVD here in Australia. My review, again for The Weekly Review, can be found here.
