The Woman in Black’s strange re-release is… wait, was that supposed to be a different movie?

The movie puts Phoebe Fox through pretty much the same exact ringer Daniel Radcliffe went through in the first movie. No, really. Nothing changed. Photo courtesy Relativity Media.

According to the synopsis, this is actually The Woman in Black 2: The Angel of Death, set 40 whole years after the first one. In the height of World War II — oh, so that’s what all the airplanes were. It says here that several war orphans are transferred to the abandoned, haunted house of a woman who according to widely believed legend likes to make children kill themselves. Predictably, child suicide shenanigans ensue.

If… did I watch the right movie? I’d swear I just saw the first movie.

It was all exactly the same. A bunch of close-ups on the creepy dolls in the upstairs room, the ghost summoning her prey with an impossibly loud rocking chair, appearing in the exact same part of the shot she always does only to turn and walk off in the exact same way leading the main character to call after her — the same main character who is unraveling the same mystery.

It has to be Angel of Death. There’s no evidence of a re-release, and Fandango lists it as showing at that theater at that time. But it just doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone release a sequel that doesn’t make any noticeable changes to the first movie? Why does this movie, literally indescribable from its predecessor, exist?

Joshua Knopp is a formerly professional film critic, licensed massage therapist and journalism student at the University of North Texas. Sun, sun, sun, here it comes. I’ve had a change of heart about reader input. It is now welcomed and encouraged. Like Reel Entropy on Facebook, follow it on Twitter when I can be bothered to make one, and shoot questions to reelentropy@gmail.com.