The movie opens with three little girls having a tea party with their dollies, having a lovely time. Then, their heads turn, as if watching something or someone go across the room toward the windows - and they all walk together toward the three windows, open them, and all to their deaths.
So, I mean, it's cheerful straightaway.
Cut to Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a London attorney who is shaving with a straight razor. Part of the reason I haven't seen this movie until now is that I couldn't imagine Harry Potter shaving, and with a straight razor, mon dieu! But honestly, it's been long enough since this movie has come out that I'm over all that. All I know now is that he's being torn away from his absurdly cute son for a few days to go off to Eel Marsh House because its owner, the widow Alice Drablow, has died. The son and the nanny agree to meet Kipps at the end of the week out at Eel Marsh for some R&R. Because that sounds lovely, right? Somebody has to go from the firm, because the local man, Jerome, has not been cooperating. Daniel Radcliffe has to be the one because he's already on his last legs at the firm - his beautiful and beloved wife, Stella, died during the birth of their son, and he has had more than his share of trouble. The firm is tired of his crap.
On the train, he meets a man named Samuel Daily (Ciaran Hinds), who offers to drive him to his lodgings, the Gifford Arms. Daily tells Kipps it's not likely he'll find a local buyer for the house...which gives him an idea of the treatment he's about to start receiving around town. It's pretty much the last nice face he sees, because everyone else is trying to get him to leave town. He gets to the hotel, and they make him stay in the attic. The attic? I mean it's not bad, I'd totally stay there, it's nice and big. But it actually does look like maybe that's the room from whose windows the children jumped at the beginning. I don't know for sure. But when you look at the pictures, the mom in the pictures looks a hell of a lot like the woman who ushered him up to the attic. So, are the girls the daughters of the lady that works at the inn? Or was she their nanny? Is the inn the place where they lived? Because I assumed when I heard there was a fancy house he was going to have to unload, that it would be the house from which they jumped.
BUT Kipps's boss did say that the widow Drablow only had a son. And he died.
So, in the morning, Arthur Kipps goes off to meet with good old uncooperative Jerome. Jerome basically just shoos him out - won't even talk of anything. Insists the Gifford Arms is packed all week, insists there's no use in discussing the property, tells him he needs to get off to London straightaway. Kipps is like, fine I'll call the firm. Jerome is like, no phones noplace, no way. Kipps says, fine I'll wire them. Jerome says, "Post office is closed on Wednesday morning. Your luggage is outside, you're going back to London today."
Kipps pays the coachman to take him out to Eel Marsh House, which is pretty much on an eely marsh. But it's more of a horrible broken down mansion than a house. The coachman is also not too keen on ever coming back to pick him up, which, come ON, coachman, don't be like that.
So inside EMH, he discovers information about the son, Nathaniel, that drowned - at age 7 - in the marsh, his body never recovered.
THIS would be when the creepy sounds start. False alarm! Just a crow.
But where is that horse neighing and that woman screaming? And the boy shouting? There's a car stuck in the - oh hell, that coachman's back. He takes Kipps to report what he saw to the cops. Just then, two boys bring in their sister, who drank lye. So THAT's the end of that child. God. No words.
He goes back to the Gifford arms, and has a drink with Mrs. Fisher (Mary Stockley), the lady whose husband runs the place (and probably the mother of those girls at the beginning). She entreats him to return to London. Tells him to go home and cherish his son.
He goes off to Sam Daily's to keep the dinner date from the train. Daily orders Kipps to avoid discussing children at all costs, as Mrs Daily (Janet McTeer) and he lost their son and...as we learn...Mrs Daily believes she is possessed by him. It's important to note that Daily pretty much always looks horrified, regardless of what's happening. Kipps and Daily have a heart to heart in which Kipps admits that he still feels his wife is with him, but Daily says it's all shadows and to let the dead go. Kipps peeks back into the dining room to have a look at the table where Mrs Daily was scratching with a knife when she was having her possessed moment; the scratching resembles a person being hung. Daily lets Kipps stay the night, since he has no other shelter.
In the morning, they head to Jerome's. Kipps spies a child behind a locked door; she screams at him to go away, accusing him of having killed the child who had ingested lye. Outside, the neighbors demand he leave, so Daily tells them he'll take Kipps to the station. Instead, he drives him over to EMH, with a dog for company. "Don't go chasing shadows, Arthur," he says before driving away.
Inside EMH, things are dusty and drab but okay on the whole, besides the occasional strange face in the mirror or rustle of skirt around the corner. At one point, the dog starts barking and takes Kipps outside to Nathaniel's grave. There is another grave, that of Jennet Humfrye, sister of Alice Drablow. Walking back, Kipps looks up at the house and sees a completely creepy face at the upstairs window, so that's terrifying. Then he goes up to the same room and looks out the same window and when seen from outside, the same creepy face is looking over his shoulder, so basically GET OUT OF THAT ROOM, but he stays and looks around and finds a letter from the sister Jennet.
The letter says that Alice and her husband basically had Jennet deemed mentally unfit and had her son taken away from her, and raised him as their own. They didn't give him her birthday cards, etc. and pretended she never existed. After he died, her letters accuse them of not trying to save him, of only saving themselves, of leaving him to die in the mud. And finally, her death certificate, reporting suicide.
He falls asleep and when he wakes up, the eyes are scratched out of the picture of Alice and Charles Drablow that he had in front of him. So I mean.
Now footsteps. And like a rocking chair. But the door is locked, so let's get an ax. Ax involved? Door opens itself. Kipps finds the chair rocking back and forth (we can see the creepy face in it) but as he nears, it stops. Something makes him peel back some wallpaper, and in creepy drippy blood writing it says, YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM. Cue the toy monkey playing the maracas.
Holy shit though - suddenly there's a handprint on the window - Kipps is at the window looking out, because it's raining and it looks like someone is outside - he's on the second floor so he's looking down - so there's a handprint on the window, and he puts his hand up on the print, and when he does, his reflection turns to a woman's reflection and she screams!
Let's go on just a bit and then we can gather our wits.
He goes downstairs, and someone keeps trying to turn the door handle. Whenever Kipps calls out, nobody answers. So finally he opens the door. Several yards from the door are all the damned dead kids - the three girls, the dead boys, probably that lye girl - there are a lot of dead kids. Just standing around, in their regular little old-time British sailor's outfits.
Now, I know I said we'd gather ourselves, and honestly, that evening just got worse and worse. That house is fully haunted. And awesome.
The next day, Daily comes to get him, and takes him back to town, where the Jeromes' house is burning and people are screaming for that little girl they keep locked in the dungeon. But when Kipps goes in for her, she looks to a woman in black, who nods, basically telling her to self-immolate, which she does.
Daily later explains that the Jeromes had lost their first child (doesn't everyone, in that town?) and decided to have another, Lucy. They kept Lucy locked up to protect her.
Well, there's a reason everyone loses their children in that town. The ghost of Jennet Humfrye had her son taken from her, and so she takes everyone else's children. Every time someone sees her, another child is taken. And since he saw her in the fire, guess who's next? His adorable son, who's on his poor little way to this godforsaken shitshow.
Daily and Kipps decide the best thing to do is to dredge up the Drablow's car from the marsh, pull the late Nathaniel from the muck, and hope that doing that can stave off his little child's being taken. So that happens. Daily wants to bury him straightaway, but first Kipps gives him all the birthday cards from Jennet and her rosary. They give him a little ceremony with all his toys in his room, and you'd have to watch this part, because it's cool.
Ultimately, they bury the boy with his mother, and it's a fitting end to that nightmare. They assume she's gone from the house. She will never forgive, though. Never forgive.
ULTIMATE SPOILER
After this - after all of this - he jumped in the freaking muck and pulled out a dead body and then put him in the coffin with his dead mother - this man has been through a lot just to save his own son, okay. AFTER ALL OF THIS - he goes to the train station to meet his son's train. Little Joseph and the nanny arrive, and the nanny throws shade when Kipps tells her they're not staying, buy 3 tickets back to London. Kipps is standing there holding his son's hand and thanking Daily for everything, when suddenly his son wanders off, jumps onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train, Kipps jumps to save him, and when the train passes, it's all, "Daddy, who's that lady?" "That's your Mummy." And they died happily ever after.
Are you f#$#$ing kidding me? TELL ME YOU ARE KIDDING ME. Because I am not joking you. I just watched that movie, thinking, "Man, I wish I hadn't waited this long, that movie is awesome!" and then I get to the end and I'm like, "At least let Harry Potter live, come on."
Too stupid, too easy, too much.
Availability: DVD, Amazon Prime
Released: 2012
Reason I Watched: No reason. I love Horror.
