Woman in Black: Angel of Death is the pointless sequel to the Daniel Radcliffe haunted house flick from a few years ago… only now with 100% less Harry Potter! It’s pretty much an in-name-only sequel… I think they had the set from the first flick laying around so they borrowed it and slapped the name on the movie.

It’s a slow-burn spook show flick that doesn’t have the skill to actually create a mood like it’s trying to do… and then it goes to cheap jump scares. The only thing that saves it would be the young lead actress (Phoebe Fox) and the setup and time frame.

Similar to Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a group of kids are evacuated from London because of the German bombing during WW2. Unlike the much more lucky kids who find Narnia, these kids are shuttled off to the world’s worst safe house… a run-down mansion with floors and walls full of holes, peeling paint, filthy, surrounded by a dangerous marsh full of barb-wire. I’m not sure who thought this was safer than the London underground… especially with all the ghosts!

The WWII setting is interesting but it’s just an excuse to cram a bunch of kids into a spook house. They randomly visit a mock-up airfield (fake wooden planes to trick the German flight crews)… why they go there doesn’t seem to have a point other than window dressing (plus such sites are no-doubt top secret and wouldn’t let a nanny and her gaggle of kids come for a visit). But it was at least something creative in this otherwise generic haunted house flick.

It’s, of course, not enough to recommend the movie. It showed a certain desire to be better than it was so I’ll give it some credit for trying. It’s not enough bad enough for it to be fun to hate. Yeah, I’ll forget this movie in a few minutes.

Score: 64