Written by The Horror Czar

The Woman in Black released on Friday, February 3 2012 after a flurry of fanfare and promotion. With so many intriguing elements to the film it’s no wonder Horror Freaks have lapped it up like a starving pack of hounds of the Baskerville.

The promotion centered on some photographs of children with their eyes scratched out with the simple question: “What Did They See?” Since Best-Horror-Movies.com was the first U.S. horror site to have a full review published of The Woman in Black, we’ve been flooded with questions from readers asking… “Yeah, what DID they see?” We work hard to not pepper our reviews and commentary with spoilers as most folks do not want to know every tidbit and secret surprise in a movie if they plan to watch it. But… for those who actually want spoilers – to have the entire movie given away including exactly what it is “they saw” – read on.

If you do not want to have the details, and the ending of The Woman in Black revealed in it’s entirety, do not read any further! This is your last chance, and we don’t want to hear crabbing and complaining that The Horror Czar “ruined” the movie for you by giving it all way. You stand warned. Read the Review Instead!

I assume that everyone who has read this far if prepared for the nitty gritty details of The Woman in Black, including the answer to the elusive question as to what those kids actually saw that caused their eyes to be scratched out… or whatever. Here is the play by play of The Woman in Black.

The Woman in Black story – including ALL SPOILERS

The film begins with a scene of three little girls, circa 1920s – 1930s or so, playing with their porcelain dolls having a tea party. Suddenly they all look up in the same direction, get blank expressions on their faces, and then walk toward the window (stepping on their doll’s heads along the way) and together leap out to their deaths. The sounds of a mother’s screaming leads to the opening credits.

Enter Daniel Radcliffe as the young attorney Arthur Kipps. Through flashbacks we learn that his wife died in childbirth, and his four year old son is to be left with the Nanny so that he can travel by train to an isolated section of England to collect the papers and records of a wealthy woman who died with no heirs as he son died years earlier in an accident in the marsh. His body was never recovered.

Once Kipps arrives in the small town it is clear that nobody wants him there, and absolutely nobody wants him to venture toward the old abandoned house, which is inaccessible for part of every day when the tides come in and surrounds the house and grounds with water. Kipps goes to the house anyway, and sees a ghostly woman dressed in black. After he returns to town he witnesses a little girl who purposely drank lye, who spits up blood and dies. The townsfolk seem to blame Kipps.

Kipps goes back to the house the next day, sees some things move around by themselves and other ghostly images, and then sees the woman in black again. He also sees a muddy image of the lost boy rise up out of the muddy muck and come into the house. The boy gets mud on the sheets too – and outside he sees the sad ghosts of all of the children who died in the town. Later, yet another child in the town dies.

Kipps comes to learn, from those in the town who will speak with him including the wealthiest family in the county, that there have been dozens of children lost, and each time a child dies it is preceded by a sighting of the mysterious woman in black.

Kipps, with the help of the wealthy man, goes to the house again and decides to find the never-recovered body of the boy and reunite it with the woman in black, who it turns out is the real mother of the lost boy and the sister of the woman who owned the house. It seems that the house owner and her husband had the sister declared an unfit mother and took her child away, the child who later died in the marsh. The sister was denied the ability to visit the boy, and cards and letters to him were not delivered. The sister got so depressed after the boy died that she hanged herself in the house. I think the sister was kept locked in the upstairs room where she hung herself as some kind of prisoner, but that part’s a little unclear.

Anyway, in some letters that Kipps found the sister vowed to “never forgive” for her being so slighted, and since became the ghostly woman in black who takes children from others like her child was taken from her. She puts these children into some kind of trance and instructs them to do things like jump out of windows, drink lye or even light themselves on fire (creepy scene).

After going through some muddy searching Kipps finds the body of the boy, lays it in the bedroom where the woman in black hung herself, and surrounds him with the cards and letters that the woman previously wrote to her son. After some ghostly visions and screaming and such, everything quiets down and everyone believes that the ghost has been satisfied.

Through all of this Kipps son and nanny were going to come meet him in this town to spend the weekend, and Kipps needed to get this all handled before they arrived so the woman in black would not kill his son too. He gets everything finished up just in time to meet his son and nanny at the train station, and instructs the nanny to buy tickets back to London because he doesn’t want to stay in the town any longer.

But… while he is saying good by to his wealthy friend and the nanny is buying tickets, Kipps’ little boy sees the woman in black and wanders down onto the train tracks in the path of an oncoming train. Kipps sees this at the last second and jumps down to save the boy. Unfortunately the train kills both of them and they become ghosts. Reunited with his wife, Kipps introduces the boy to his mother and they walk off together, happy little ghosts.

What did they see? They just saw The Woman in Black. There is really nothing else… when someone sees the woman in black she tells a child to kill themselves in a gruesome way, and they do. That’s it.

The Woman in Black Review