The Woman in Black is a UK horror film starring Daniel
Radcliffe as a man who moves into a haunted house while trying to sell it,
unaware of the ghost living inside.
The trailer features a non-diegetic voiceover from a young
girl, which is (in my opinion) more creepy than it would be if it was spoken by
an adult. The girl is reciting what sounds at first to be a nursery rhyme, but
then takes a sinister twist. It refers to a “spectre of darkness” who “always
comes back”, and is eventually revealed to be The Woman in Black, a malevolent
spirit.
At the start, mysterious children’s toys are seen, which
provide a sound to accompany the girl’s rhyme. The toys are neglected and
dusty, which suggests that the ghost had a child before it died, and the story
of the child did not end well.
The next scenes show Radcliffe’s character in the back of a
horse-drawn cart, passing a cross at the side of a road, before arriving at an
abandoned and run-down manor house. The cross at the roadside is a common sign
that there is a grave there, which is never a good sign.
Many of the shots focus on children, suggesting that
children will play a major part in the film. It also connotes the innocence of
youth being threatened by a horror that they wouldn’t understand. The focus on
children, combined with the appearance of the neglected children’s toys, could
connote to a canny observer that the ghost is angry as to the loss of her
child, and is jealous or enraged at the other children. This would lead her to
target the children as retribution.
An old and tattered picture is also shown, of a man, woman
and child. The eyes of all three have been severely creased, and are unable to
be seen. This could connote that what is shown after this picture is
horrifying, and not something that normal people do not want to see.
Radcliffe’s character is then seen living in the run-down
manor, and begins to see the ghost of the Woman in Black, as well as the ghost
of a young boy. A message is written on the wall to him, telling him “You could
have saved him.” This also implies that Radcliffe’s character has seen the loss
of a male character (presumably a son or younger brother) in his life before
moving to the manor house.
The main piece of editing used is a series of jump cuts,
linking exciting scenes that do not follow normal continuity. As such, this
style of editing is most commonly used in trailers. A fade to black is also
used in the trailer, before the title of the film comes up.
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