Exclusive Media Group’s production company Hammer Films (a relaunch of the legendary British horror-focused moviehouse) has just announced that upstart British director James Watkins will call the shots on Hammer’s first 3D film, an adaptation of author Susan Hill’s 1983 supernatural classic The Woman in Black. The project will be Watkins’s second feature effort, the first being 2008′s severely underrated Eden Lake, a taut white-knuckler about hooded teenage hooligans terrorizing a couple’s (including current hot-actor Michael Fassbender) picnic in the woods. The script for The Woman in Black has been written by Jane Goldman, filmmaker Matthew Vaughn’s partner-in-crime who penned the screenplays for Vaughn’s Stardust and his upcoming buzz-grabber Kick-Ass.
The story centers on a lawyer who’s sent to a quaint village with a rather morbid assignment: he must handle a dead client’s paperwork, a task that’s made difficult once an all-black clad spectre begins popping up unwelcomely.
This won’t be the first that The Woman in Black morphs into a feature-length live-actioner; back in 1989, Herbert Wise directed a made-for-TV version that aired on Central Television’s ITV Network (UK), and scared the piss out of yours truly when I caught it on cable as a pre-teen. If you’re looking for a quick thrill, rent the DVD and brace yourselves for one of the best dream sequence jump-scares out there (though the scene grated a little cheese upon a more recent viewing of mine, it still holds up for atmosphere alone). Wise’s film also packs a slit-your-wrist downer of an ending, which I quite love; I’ve yet to read the book, so I can’t say whether it’s lifted from Hill’s text or not. But it’s nonetheless dark as hell.
Watkins showed tons of promise with Eden Lake, so The Woman in Black already has sky-high.
Source: Bloody Disgusting
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