An afternoon with the Woman in Black

The year : 2005 

The place : Jakarta, Indonesia

Sunday afternoon, I had just walked in home after a nice, relaxing vacation, while the husband had stayed back in Bali for a conference. The minute I walked in through the doors, I was greeted by the sight of my help, in tears. 

"What's wrong?" I asked, concerned. 

"Hantu" she said and started howling again. I knew enough Bahasa to know that hantu meant ghosts. 

"Hantu dimana? Where is hantu?" I asked in my broken Bahasa. 

It didn't take much cajoling for the story to come out. While we were away, the help, who was all alone in the large, rambling house we had just moved into, had heard someone pacing on the roof each night. She had looked around but there was no one in sight. 

Ergo, the ghost who walked! 

The poor girl was terrified! She had stayed awake each night, praying! Now that I was back, she couldn't wait to hand over the keys to the house and leave at the earliest. 

All the holiday cheer drained out of me that very instant. But it was not the thought of sharing our home with a supernatural resident or having him/ her attack me in the middle of the night that was making me anxious. Instead what was worrying me was a far more mundane, practical, 'this-worldly' consideration, simply put, "what the hell will I do without the maid?" 

Let me clarify here - it is not as if I am super brave and don't believe in ghosts. I believe in ghosts/ demons/ spirits/ witches/ poltergeists & every other species that habits the Other World and I am as scared of them as the next person. 

But if you have ever lived in Indonesia, you soon come to realise, ghosts are omnipresent, you might not bump into them physically, but you hear of them everywhere! There were reported sightings by people working late in my office, there were sightings in an apartment (near a graveyard) that I had checked out and liked immensely; even one of the girls in my team claimed to possess the ability to see spirits and was supposedly sharing her room with one! After some time, you soon start taking your "hantu" sightings with a pinch of salt and take them in your stride. 

Now hantus may be easy to find in Jakarta, but finding the maid hadn't been easy. I came across her after sacking 2 maids in quick succession - the first didn't get along with my old, opinionated cook and their never ending fights and arguments drove me insane. The second started a romance with our driver the day she walked in. Neither situation was agreeable with me and both were sent packing within a couple of days. So after great trouble, I had managed to find someone who was acceptable to the cook and me and who didn't romance the driver and there was no way in Hell I was going to let her go without putting up a fight to keep her back (it is a different matter altogether that we found out later that she did get secretly married to our driver but that is another story!). 

So in my desperation to ensure she didn't quit, I decided to make the bravest or possibly the foolishest of moves (anyone who has read a story called Anath Babu's terror by Satyajit Ray would probably agree it's the latter), I decided to prove to her there was no hantu, atleast no evil hantu in our home, by staying out in the garden the whole night! 

How terrifying could that be, I asked myself? After all, there had been nights when I had been all alone in that large house, when the maid was away on her day off and Vj was out of the country, and I had never had any close encounters of the ghostly kind, ever! 

As night descended, I sat in the patio, by the pool, waiting for the ghost who walked to make his/ her appearance. A few hours of sipping wine, swatting mosquitoes and staring at the trees in the garden in silence later, I began to feel bored. 

Forget a visitation, I wasn't even hearing or feeling a thing! No sounds, no sudden gust of wind, no voices whispering in the darkness. Nothing! Nada! Zilch! 

I decided to hasten matters by initiating a conversation; "Do you know how difficult it is to find a good maid these days?" I asked, just in case the ghost who walked was male and didn't appreciate stuff like that. Taking silence for acquiescence, I pressed on. "Can we just make a pact, we shall keep out of your hair and you keep out of ours?". Trust me, after the wine, this conversation sounded far more rational and reasonable than it does now! 

To cut a long story short, I passed the night uneventfully. No ghost appeared. Nothing scary happened. There were no screams of terror. No shivers ran down my spine. 

7 yrs later, watching the The Woman in Black reminded me of that night I spent endlessly waiting in the garden for the ghostly resident of our house to emerge, only for all the anticipation to fall flat! 

My expectations were sky high when I went to see the Woman in Black. It was my very first horror movie alone in the theatre. Now I may be an ardent fan of horror movies, the seedier the better, but I am totally chicken when it comes to watching them alone in the theatre! 

But this time around, curiosity got the better of my fear and I decided to take the bold step of watching it alone on the big screen, without a companion whose hand I could hold or whose shoulder I could hide my face in, when the going got terrifying. 

I went well prepared; armed with my favourite meatball - mozzarella panini, asked the guy at the ticket counter to find me a seat right next to other people (making him break into an unexpected smile at my request), and then covered myself up with a nice, thick stole for extra protection. 

Note: The way I always wrap myself up like a mummy while watching a horror movie reminds me of V2 on his visits to Deen's farm. "Put my hoody on Mamma" says V2 each time he goes to feed Billy goat. Why I ask. "Because Billy goat cannot eat my head" V2 says, brimming with the surety of one who knows exactly what he is doing. I guess my brain works exactly like that of a 2 & 1/2yr old, believing in that irrefutable logic that ghosts and goats obviously don't think of you as fair game, if you are hiding under layers of woollen jackets, stoles and blankets!! 

And just like that night in Jakarta, 7yrs ago, all that preparation came to nought; or in words of the Bard himself, it was "much ado about nothing"!! All there was, was an endless wait for something scary to happen. And that my friends, is the common thread between a night spent ghost watching in Jakarta and an afternoon spent 7yrs later, watching a horror movie in a theatre in London! 

Now that we have solved the mystery of why I rambled on with this long story that seemed to have no relation to the Woman in Black, let's get on with the movie itself - 

The movie starts in a manner very reminiscent of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with Radcliffe reminding you of Jonathan Harker travelling to Transylvania to meet the Count, and of being shunned by the villagers and warned to stay away. 

However, the resemblance ends there. The Woman in Black is no Count of the Undead and she is not even half as interesting. The chills and the scares are all predictable - the face at the window, the dog barking, the rocking chair that rocks violently on its own, the curse on the village, it's all there! 

Some times, even the predictable can make for interesting viewing. Take all the seedy horror movies made by the Ramsay brothers for instance - they take the predictable and the hackneyed and have managed to successfully turn them into cult classics! 

The Woman in Black, inspite of all the predictable paraphernalia, veers more towards the serious than the seedy. But sadly it lacks woefully in the scare factor - it doesn't have the creepiness of the Ring, it doesn't give you the chills like Friday the 13th, it lacks the drama of the Exorcist and it doesn't hold your attention like the part horrific -part romantic Dracula. 

Daniel Radcliffe, who plays the Jonathan Harker like role, comes across as a teenager masquerading as an adult and goes through the movie looking extremely distressed about having to keep up the pretence! 

And in that sense, the movie and the protagonist seem so alike and interchangeable... ...both pretending to be so much more grown up than they really are!