Double Feature: The Woman in Black and High School of the Dead

I'm watching and reviewing at least two horror movies a week in an effort to better enjoy my Halloween season. Along the way I'm adding some thoughts on adapting them to gaming.

I'm adding another haunted house story this week with The Woman in Black. I also watched the anime, High School of the Dead, as I continue to be very loose in my own definitions.

As an aside seeing the Hammer Films logo at the beginning of The Woman in Black reminds me that I've never really watched the classic Hammer Horror films. Expect some reviews along that line in the coming weeks.

Warning: lots of spoilers!!

The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black is a very quiet film of slowly building tension and a growing sense of eeriness. Some of the scares are lost on someone who has to deal with an rampaging 1-year-old every few minutes. By which I mean, please watch this film alone in the dark if possible.

The premise is that a spectral woman in black forces children to kill themselves whenever she is spotted. In her appearance, the wetlands that she haunts, and how her presence heralds death she reminds me of the legend of the banshee. She even wails. Of course her story goes deeper than that.

Daniel Radcliffe plays a widower in Edwardian England whose wife died in childbirth leaving him to raise their son alone. This Arthur Kipps remains haunted by his wife, in danger of losing his job at the law firm and barely holding himself together. As his last chance he is sent to review the papers of the late Alice Drablow to make sure the firm has the final will. Drablow's son died as a young child, drowned in the wetlands that separate her island home from the mainland.

With the exception of the local gentry, Mr. Daily, everyone in town tries to convince Kipps to move on quickly. It seems they fear he will see the lady in black and thus endanger their children. Of course this only drives him on.

Eventually he makes it to the grand if decaying home. The creepy location holds many secrets and as he works, we the audience watch as the woman moves about in the background.

It takes some time for Kipps to unravel the mystery, haunted by spectral cries and both the ghosts of the woman and her child. It seems that Alice's son was actually her deranged sister's, now the woman in black. She never forgave her sister for stealing him or for letting him drown. So now she steals the children of others.

Eventually Kipps accepts what is going on. With two children dead already due to his poking around, he tries to stop his own son from coming to town. When that fails, he decides on a desperate gambit to lay the ghost to rest. With Daily's help, he reunites the ghost with her son. Things seem to work.

But the ghost vowed never to forgive her sister and continues the killings, sending Kipps's son into the path of a train. Oddly I found that when Kipps sacrifices his own life failing to save his son, it actually gives the film a less depressing ending. He and his son are reunited in death with his wife and escape the horror of the movie, leaving the woman in black to menace us the audience.

Overall I think this film is excellent and most issues I have with it are issues I have with the entire genre.

The one issue I have with the movie is suspending my disbelief that things have lasted this long. Giving how extreme the ghost's activity becomes at night, I can't see how Alice managed to live at the house by herself for so long. With the number of deaths over the years and how many townsfolk put one and one together, I'm surprised no one burned down the house. I know there's a sequel set in the 1940s which clearly shows people don't understand how fragile old houses are.

Gaming Discussion

Warning: ranting

Now for my major problem with the genre as a whole. Vengeful ghost stories always make me consider what it means to “never forgive.” The concept of an implacable monster that will relentlessly hunt for victims forever implies some troubling issues for the world at large. A single ghost like this is fine but there are a lot of dead people on our planet. Even if a small number become killer ghosts, most old cities and towns should be unlivable by this point. We never hear about killer Neanderthal ghosts or spirits from tribes no one remembers existed, let alone the dozens of murderers who die every century in any given location. Yet we are expected to believe some ghosts who will haunt the world for centuries.

In the West, it always seems those ghosts that are remembered are a threat. You don't see forgotten spirits being a danger (out of sight out of mind). Eastern ghosts do get riled up by being forgotten, though after a certain point even they stop being restless. It just always bothers me that it's the memory that is dangerous, as if we damn ourselves. Which I guess given the nature of superstitions is true.

Rant over

Anyway getting back to gaming.

The movie itself could make a nice introduction scenario for a period Hunter: the Vigil game or any game pitting low powered mortals against the supernatural. Geist: the Sin-eaters of course has a natural lead in though to make the Woman in Black a real threat she would need to be a Geist herself or a very powerful ghost. Mortals work better given the lack of an easy way to fight the ghost. Weakness helps breeds fear.

I also want to comment on how the Underworld in the new World of Darkness (or the Skinlands in Classic World of Darkness) helps deal with the issue of huge numbers of ghosts. In those settings ghosts are tied to the world by anchors. If those anchors are lost, the ghost finds itself banished from the living world forever. Thus ancient ghosts are rare as their anchors die (if mortal) or crumble (for places or things). It allows for a natural decline in the population of ghosts on Earth.

Though I now am filled with a desire to run a horror game where ghosts are powered by the belief of the living, essentially tulpas of our fears.

High School of the Dead

From ghosts to zombies and from movies to anime, I move to High School of the Dead. Like many zombie stories, this series isn't actually about the scares but instead the psychology of the survivors and man's inhumanity toward man. We watch as these young protagonists are forced to discard the trappings of civilization to survive.

However, it would be really nice if the creators were not obsessed with breasts and panties. The level of nudity, jiggling breasts and panty shots exceeds tastelessness and enters the realm of the grotesque. I have to mentally block it out to enjoy the series. At first, it felt like sticking anime cosplayers into a period drama just to make your audience happy, but by the middle of the series it is just ugly.

Despite this I like the series overall (even if I have to keep ignoring what seems like 1/3 of each episode). The psychological element, especially as narrated by our male protagonist, is really compelling. At first the heroes struggle to kill zombies, those who were their classmates and teachers, in order to survive. But soon they find other survivors to be a larger threat. They struggle for resources, to protect themselves (especially the women), and find themselves killing the living to survive. Some struggle with the fact that they enjoy this new life and can't stand the thought of returning to how they once were.

Meanwhile around them civilization crumbles. People protest as martial law is declared. Police do inhuman things to maintain what order remains. People obey their consciences and die or suffer while others descend into insanity or barricade themselves in their homes, killing those who seek help.

Our cast spans a nice range of high school archetypes. We have the brain, a kendo champion, a delinquent, his former girlfriend who happens to trained in the spear (got to love Japanese sports), and a nerd whose obsession is guns. Rounding out the gang (ugh the horror of that pun) is an absurdly voluptuous nurse.

I find the structure of each episode interesting. Typically it starts with some soliloquy from the delinquent but his ending soliloquy doesn't always coincide with the end of the actual action (not counting previews or the randomly spaced snap shots of the world's decline into savagery and chaos). In fact I don't think I've really found much in common in how the episodes flow except to end with some hint of worse to come.

I also like that the characters examine how the zombies behave and there is some underlining logic. While the cause of the worldwide outbreak is unclear, the monsters obey some rules. They don't see and react to noise alone. Head shots kill them but other damage causes no reaction from them. They are strong and hungry but only really seek out things making noise. If not for their numbers and strength, they might easily be overcome by snipers and perhaps some specialized vehicles with front mounted wood chippers (heck just set one up in an alley and turn on a siren behind it).

Gaming thoughts

Remove the porn and you would have a serviceable survival horror story. Working their way up from improvised weapons and sports equipment, the player characters slowly acquire first police weaponry and then military arms, growing in skill and numbers. But eventually those they save become liabilities and they must either sacrifice what they've fought for or rise to establish a new order. along the way we would need some way to track their relative sanity, perhaps using Integrity from World of Darkness 2nd edition or the Madness Meters from Unknown Armies.