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Comparing every version of The Woman In Black

Classical JG

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The Woman In Black is a brilliantly creepy ghost story, but there are four different versions with four different endings. Which ending is your favourite – the book, the play, the 1989 TV film, or the 2012 theatrical film starring Daniel Radcliffe? I think my favourite is probably the 2012 film, but that was also the first one I saw!

00:00 Introduction
01:21 The story
05:41 The time period
13:03 Mourning dress
20:15 The book
23:01 The play
24:51 The 1989 TV film
27:44 The 2012 film
36:36 Loki!

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Creepy Classics music composed and performed by Ed Harrisson ©

Books and sources

Lucy Worsley, An Intimate History of the Home

Fiona Kay and Neil R. Storey, Victorian Fashions for Women

Manners and Rules of Good Society, Or, Solecisms to be Avoided by a Member of the Aristocracy. London: Frederick Warne, 1888. via https://victorianweb.org/history/mour....

https://www.joyvspicer.com/joy-blog/2...

Image credits:

NB: Some images including screenshots from the 1989 and 2012 version and stills from various stage productions were taken from an old powerpoint in which I hadn’t noted where they were from, but I couldn’t track them down again to cite the source!

Screenshots and publicity stills from The Woman In Black (2012) via http://allscreencaps.com/photo/8405/s... and https://www.truemythmedia.com/true-my...

Screenshots from The Woman In Black (1989) via https://www.slashertrash.com/the-woma... and https://www.britmovie.co.uk/forum/liv...

Images from the West End production via https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/...

Illustration from “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad”: Book: James, M. R. (Montague Rhodes), 1862-1936 ; Illustration: James McBryde, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

St Micheal’s Mount, Cornwall: Tide starts to cover the Causeway by N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons

Louisa Brown in mourning clothes, 1908, held by John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Princess Sophie of Prussia and Constantine, Duke of Sparta, 1888: Wilhelm Höffert, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Victorian mourning dress advert: Unsigned, anonymous commercial artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Queen Victorian and grandchildren in mourning for Princesses Alice and Marie in 1879: W. & D. Downey, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Queen Victoria in 1863: Lytton Strachey, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Prince Albert’s daughters in mourning, 1862: William Bambridge, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Woman in half-mourning sketch: unknown, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Fashion plate showing evening mourning dress, 1810: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Sheikh Chidda and Queen Victoria, 1893: Hills & Saunders, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Victorian carte de visite of a woman wearing a jet necklace via https://www.morninggloryjewelry.com/a...

Full mourning c1860 via http://www.katetattersall.com/mournin...

Other photos author’s own

20 Comments

@bennett8535 1 year ago

Enjoyed the video. Want to toss in the caveat that just because Radcliff was 21 when he played the part, doesn't mean the character was 21. When watching the film I assumed that he was late 20s / early 30s, an entirely reasonable time to be married with a kiddo back then.

@SailorShinju 1 year ago

21:10 she uses the children to punish the parents because she views children as possessions, not people. You see this in cases where a bad parents will call child services on the good parent just to punish them for taking their children. If they really cared about their child they would get their act together and at least try to be better, progress over perfection.

Janet says in her letters if I can’t have him, no one can like he’s a car they fight over. She doesn’t know the boy from Adam and is not in a fit state to be a mother, he had everything a young boy needed living with Alice and she should’ve been happy for him. Social pressure be damned, go somewhere else and call yourself a widow if you believe you are truly the best person to raise this baby.

Killing the child to punish the parent still happens literally all the time so it’s unfortunate this story isn’t studied more

@sigridwallenholm2090 1 year ago

When I watched the 2012 version for the second time I interpreted the ending as the woman in black "paying" Arthur back the favor for him reuniting her with her son, this by reuniting him with his wife.

@Cat-uo4vw 1 year ago

I love that ending for the play where Arthur reveals that he never hired an actress for the Lady in Black. A very disquieting ending to a tragic story. I bet the first time the play ran with that ending, everyone in the audience was freaked out.

@gabby-w8q 10 months ago

The 1989 movie is terrifying. Just terrifying.

@catladybre3290 1 year ago

I interpreted the 2012 movie ending differently. I saw it as her vengeance obviously not being finished, But as an acknowledgment of him reuniting her with her sons remains she manipulated things so that they would both die, so the whole family could be together again in death. Because he really mourned his wife’s death and he was alive but not really living, so now he’s dead but living.

@erynlasgalen1949 1 year ago

When you mention being traumatized by the deaths of the children in the movie, I think that stories like this perform a service. I read Pet Sematery, where a toddler runs away from his parents into the road and is killed by a lumber truck. When my own son was born, I kept his hand in mine any time we were near any kind of traffic, as I could not risk suffering the grief of Lewis Creed. I do the same thing with my grandsons, to their great annoyance, since the youngest is almost a teenager. You suffer anxiety that makes you put all the household chemicals out of reach. That's the impression the stoies make on us.

@M9AX 1 year ago

Honestly, what stuck with me more than the actual ghost was how - especially in the book - Arthur emphasises just how opressive the house is. Anyone who's had an awful job or even just stayed in a terrible accomodation can relate to the feeling of a place draining you, and the relief of finally getting away. In the book, he reflects on how awful Alice Drablow's final years (possibly decades) must have been. She was alone in a haunted house, unable to leave because unlike Arthur and everyone in the village; it's her haunted house. Her ghosts.

The idea of a vengeful spirit chasing you away and killing your children whilst you watch helpless is obviously terrifying, but spending the rest of your life in a house haunted by your sins is something more likely. Every house is haunted, after all.

@JackTheVulture 1 year ago

Such vivid memories of a girl behind me in a very quiet theater swearing "YOU B____" at the woman in the last shot of the movie, haha! This makes me want to read the book. I doubt I'll ever get a chance to see the play but it sounds like fun!

@harrymcnally6437 1 year ago

I probably don't have the words exactly right, but I love the part from the ending of the 2012 movie, where after they've been hit by the train, and it cuts to Arthur and his son in the afterlife, the son says, "Daddy, who's that woman?"

I'm pretty sure the audience is meant to think he's looking at the woman in black.
But, thankfully, it's such a relief to hear Arthur say, "That’s mummy", and to see who it actually is.

@kerrytakashi12 1 year ago (edited)

The 1989 film was downright terrifying. The play even more so. I didn’t find the 2012 film all that fantastic. But Radcliffe was good and they were wonderfully stylish with the Eel Marsh House set. They made a sequel to the 2012 film that was interesting but confusing.

@lauraholmes2402 1 year ago

I loved how they presented the ghost in the 2012 movie. You see her in the background, but she doesn’t move for ages so you think it’s not her. Then she moves

@The_FBD 1 year ago

Watched the stage play in secondary school and it rocked our worlds!!!! The woman came screaming through the audience and one point and then at several other points could be seen silently walking along the balcony while the two actors onstage would not notice her. We all talk about it still 12 years later!

@jerseyfanel 1 year ago

I've seen the Mexican production of this play so many times because I love it, and every time they do something slightly different, it's so good. I remember the one that freaked me out the most was when they had the lights going on and off and the woman in black showing up in different aisles in the audience. I'm pretty sure they had more than one actress for that, it was great

@SuperVaIle 1 year ago

I think the end in 2012 movie has some thematic connection to the fact that Arthur have up his life to try to save Joseph, he's a good father despite his depression, and he can move onto a peaceful afterlife while Jenet is stubbornly staying behind with her anger. She could have been with Nathaniel in the afterlife but just like the day when he died she just stands there and watches bitterly, spreading misery. She may have killed Arthur and Joseph but she doesn't win because Arthur goes with his son into death and they are *still together*. I think that's beautiful and as you say, bittersweet, and I also think that's another reason we end with a shot of Janet because ultimately she's the one trapped in her own misery.

@Thecoincollector. 1 year ago

I watched the 89 version in the mid 2000,s alone in a dark house at night it scared the living crap out of me

@MorganHart-w9m 1 year ago

1989 all the way for me. Though the Jump Scare always catches you, the true horror is captured by the line "When the child cry's for his Mother, Which is he calling for?". It was also a big influence on the League of Gentlemen!

@SailorShinju 1 year ago

Fun fact: just because you had electric lighting in 1970s England didn’t mean that you had electricity. That was before the law was implemented to say that every UK home needs to have working electricity. Whether or not you pay your bill to have access to it is up to you.

My mum lived with her grandparents in the 70s and said you could only count on have gas OR electricity on a given day and you never knew which it was going to be. It amazed her that with all that going on her grandma still had a hot meal on the table for her every day when she got home from school, she had no idea how.

I don’t remember the exact reason and I can’t ask her now so might have to look up why that was haha

For the record I always felt like the story was set in the 1800s from the costuming in the play, just thought that was interesting from a historical point of view ☺️

@meogatopreto 8 months ago

I watched the newest movie with my mom, and she pointed out something that really stuck with me: Because of Arthur's protective/selfless nature, he ruined the Woman's revenge and punishment. In the movie she only takes the children to separate them of their parents, so even if his wife's ghost didn't came to rescue their spirits in the end, Arthur would be forever together with his son because they died together, Wich is NOT what the Woman wanted, specially considering her bitter angry face at seeing them together.

@13Okuni1 1 year ago

My personal favourite ending was the stage play, specifically one rendition by a crew from London when they visited Singapore. The Woman was wandering around the theatre every now and again, barely visible as she ducked in between the black curtains hugging the walls, silent the whole time but when she did show up more obviously she was always seemingly staring dead at the stage. Even during the funeral scene, she was standing only at the bottom of the stage stairs and only moved slowly into the back after. Then when Arthut Kipps said to the Actor the final line of never having seen the actress, the Woman burst out from the back onto the stage for the first time screaming bloody murder, I almost died of fright as the lights cut out and a deafening crash (sound effect) was heard immediately after her scream ended. That single play was responsible for my love of stage plays, especially horror ones, and even though I've watched more versions of the play that first one is still the best. I love the book too, reading it makes me remember the visuals and audio from the play though lol. The films were great in their own way, but for me they lacked the intense immersion I personally felt made the story, and I didn't really like the ending of Arthur also dying just because I like the existential horror of living with the knowledge of the ghost haunting you forever after killing your family, with the implication that you brought her here. Terrifying stuff