The Woman in Black and the Difference Between Horror and Terror

Image courtesy of IMDb.

When it comes to horror in film and television (and in literature), there’s a difference between horror and terror. #horror #film #television

Horror is the scary-looking ghost that pops out at the lead character who's stupidly exploring the weird noise in the attic of the spooky old house.

Terror is showing the ghost several times to the audience, while the lead character is oblivious, right up until the ghost pops out.

I didn’t invent these definitions by the way; I’ve just forgotten who did. Both of these situations have their honored place in the horror genre. However, I think it’s definitely true that today, horror is currently much more emphasized than terror, to the detriment of the genre.

Old vs. New

A good example of the difference between horror and terror can be had by comparing the two onscreen versions that were made of The Woman in Black, the best-selling novel by Susan Hill. One debuted in 1989, and the other, more famous version was released in 2012.

The 1989 WiB is a 100-minute British television movie directed by Herbert Wise. It features a lot of terror, but not a lot of horror. The titular ghost only appears four times in the whole film, but believe me, four times is enough! Much of the rest of the film consists of building up scenes to each of her very memorable appearances.

One of the most terrifying scenes occurs when Arthur Kidd (Adrian Rawlins) has to stay at night in the isolated house that belonged to his firm’s former client, Alice Drablow. Arthur has already seen and heard some frightening things, when suddenly the lights go out. He has to go outside--in the night, in the dark--to start up a rickety old generator in a dilapidated shed. Of course, the generator doesn’t start up right away, and Arthur has to crank it again and again.

Throughout this struggle, the audience has been primed to believe that the vengeful Woman in Black will appear in the shed and do something horrifying to Arthur while he's fiddling with the generator. In the end, nothing happens. Arthur gets the generator going, finally, and then goes back into the house without incident. But the scene is nail-bitingly tense, because of the expectations that the director has carefully built up beforehand.

Now, let’s move on to the 2012 big-screen remake, directed by James Watkins of Eden Lake fame, which stars Daniel Radcliffe as Arthur. This film has a lot of horror—much of it CGI’d—but not much terror.

In other words, this film shows us a lot of disturbing images, but it doesn’t do a very good job of building up to them. It just flips the horror past us at random, like pages turning in an old-fashioned photo album. (Let’s not even get into the “happy ending” that’s tacked on at the end--which is absurd and not faithful to the book--because that's not all that relevant to this discussion.)

Which one is the “scariest” version? For me, it’s the 1989 WiB version, hands down. (IMDb reviewers agree, giving the 1989 WiB a solid 7.3 out of 10, while only giving the 2012 version a "meh" 6.2 out of 10.)

I’ve watched the 1989 WiB several times and I know I will probably watch it again. I’ve no desire to watch the newer version again, unless I need to do so while researching an article.

Sadly, the 1989 version is hard to come by, as the DVD is out of print and selling at astronomical sums online. A very good copy is currently posted on YouTube; if you're interested in seeing it, watch it quick before the copyright cops find it.