 Hey guys it's Liana and I'm here today to compare the Woman in Black movie to the Woman in Black book. So I put up a poll on Instagram and asked if people wanted me to talk about it because I had just watched the Woman in Black movie and it's not like the book and was like does anyone want me to film a video to compare them? And the answer was yes. So here we are. I did this before with the mortal engines so I'm going to structure it kind of the same because I called that video and I think I have called this video what went wrong. So what I did in that video and what I will do in this video is go through what was the same in both the book and the movie and then talk about what was different and then talk about like why I think those changes don't work. Everything I'm going to say in the beginning is going to be like I'm not going to specify if it's book or movie because this is the same in both and then yeah we'll go from there. Needless to say but I'm saying it anyway so apparently it's not needless. This will be spoilery because I'm going to go through like beginning to end for the book and beginning to end for the movie and talk about compare contrast and like why the book is better. Much like with mortal engines I feel like a lot of the changes because sometimes I get it like why when you're adapting something for the screen why certain changes need to be made either because of runtime so you can't fit it all in. This is a short book so there's no reason you can't fit it all in or because like it's something that it's one of those sort of game and eschatite things where you could get away with describing that way on paper but there's no realistic way to depict that visually. The example I use is like if in a fantasy book I'm pretty sure gaming has done this when you describe something as like the absence of color. I mean that works in a book but in a movie you're gonna have to do something so you can't actually show an absence of color. So stuff like that like I get it like sometimes changes have to be made. In this case the change is made in my opinion detract from the quality of the story and there are changes that did not need to be made for any kind of like cinematic reason. So without any more ado let's get into it. So the book and the movie the basic sort of premise and plot I can't really say from the beginning what is the same because even the beginning is not same but some bare bones of it are same. So both the book and the movie it's a story of this youngish man in the movie he's played by Daniel Radcliffe who is working for uh he's a solicitor which in England is a lawyer and he's working for a firm and his firm sends him to this remote town because their client has died so he's been sent there to wrap up the affairs of their client to go to her house which is even in this remote village the house is even remote her from the remote village it's across like this swampy causeway so he's sent there to go she's supposedly like a hoarder and had a lot of papers so they have like her will and stuff but they have to go through and sort through all of her papers that's it's not super gone into but it's the reason for him to be sent there and it does um because he's sorting through papers it leads him to discover things that's true in both he's sent by his company by his firm and this takes place in like 1800s if you did not know i just i'm kind of assuming you vaguely know so he goes to this remote town and so much is different in the movie but okay that basically again he goes to this town and like people in the town clearly know something about the house and know something about um the lady who owned it and like there's clearly something more mysterious and sinister going on everyone kind of tries to talk him out of going to the house or like questions him going to the house but he's like this is my job and i'm here to do my job and he goes to the house and the house is being haunted by a woman in black and uh the woman in black again is different in the book and movie but what is same is that when people have seen the woman in black children die that is like what makes it so terrifying it's not just that she's like scary to encounter but like doesn't actually do anything sightings of her tend to coincide with children dying so people have connected the two that when she's been seen children have died when he goes to the house again in the book and the movie although what he finds is different in the book and the movie when he goes to the house he experiences like the haunting he sees the woman in black and he's also when he's sorting through the client's papers that's when he kind of learned between what the villagers tell him and what he finds in the papers he learns the story of the house and he learns the story of the woman in black and who she was and why she would be haunting the house in the town and why children dying would be a thing with her that's true in both that's kind of where the similarity ends the movie adds in a lot of stuff but it doesn't just add it also changes so it isn't just that the movie thought that because again this is a short book so if the they felt like it wasn't enough story like it wasn't long enough to to fill a two hour movie I would disagree but it isn't just like taking what's in the book and then adding to it it changes what was in the book and adds to it and I don't honestly I think the book is more sinister the order in which I experienced these is book first well honestly it was play first and the play by the by if it's ever in your town or your village or your city or wherever you live the play is like that where it takes the book and it's almost like word for word the book and then it tax on a framing device so it expands on it in that way but really like it doesn't make the story much longer it just it makes gives a reason for it to be kind of being acted out for you but the story itself remains the same and then the framing device adds like one extra layer of scariness to it so the play is really good and if the movie had done what the play did in its own way it would have been fabulous and I don't know why it did it anyway okay so in the book he's Arthur is his name Arthur this is his last name maybe we will check Kips I was gonna say Gibbs and I was like it's not Gibbs it's Kips Arthur Kips in the book he's a young man he's like pretty like early in his career he's excited about the opportunity of like the responsibility of being sent to this town on behalf of his firm and he's like this is like a big chance for me maybe I'll hold up the books since I'm talking about the book right now you're welcome and also this edition is like super cute so he's happy excited jazzed about going to this town and he meets a guy on the train this also happens in the movie he meets a guy in the train who's also going to that town or from that town and kind of semi befriends him he's like oh you're going there too okay and um he kind of gets him to the inn where he's staying the people at the inn are really welcoming and really nice they give him nice food they give him a nice room he's like this is great but when they find out where he's going to that house that that's why he's there every time someone finds that out the cheeriness kind of like fades and like they're not mean to him but he can see they're like unnerved or upset by the house like the mention of the house but they don't say anything they don't tell him anything about it he just as soon as he brings up the house they just get all hushed and like freaked out and they all subtly in their own different ways to kind of try to talk him out of going to the house not aggressively and they're not mad at him they're not mean to him they're just like are you sure you want to go there and he goes then with this uh the guy that he met on the train he goes with him i think it's with him well whoever he goes with somebody from the village it might be his contact there from the firm um he goes with him to visit either to the funeral just to the grave of um it might be the funeral i think it's the funeral of their client yeah i think that's why he hurried up there to be there for the funeral and then to go through her papers to go to the funeral and there's like nobody at the funeral and he's like how sad that there's nobody at the funeral like this lady like she lived and died and nobody cared enough about her in her lifetime to come to her funeral that's so sad he does see like a bunch of children nearby but they're not like at the funeral and he's like that's weird but he does then kind of notice that there's like kind of not in the distance stuck not super in the distance he can like see her face but kind of further off is a woman in black which is appropriate at a funeral of course you'd be wearing black so there's a woman who he's like oh but she did have at least one friend and then he kind of like looks at her and that her face is like kind of horrific looking and so he's like oh it makes sense that she's kind of keeping her distance and has like a like a veil on um and have you bond it because like she's clearly sickly but she like came to the funeral and that's nice he says something like that to the guy he's with and is like well at least she had like that one friend and he's like what are you talking about he's like well there was that lady in black that came to the funeral and he's like uh no so then he thinks that's weird that like that freaks people out and he kind of begins to piece together that people think that this is a haunting and then when he goes to the house he also then spots that same woman in black on the property near a grave that's on the property and he's like that's weird that she'd follow me here then he looks again and she's gone and he's like I don't think there's anywhere she could go but she must have done like there must be there's like a lot of shrubbery and other buildings around like yeah she must have just gone off it's still weird that she came out here but whatever and there's a guy that used to work for the woman who's his client who worked at the house and he drives him to the house and back again but they have to be careful and time it with the tides right because of the the water that comes in and out and and cuts the house and the property off from the village so he can't come for him at any time he kind of has to pick him up and drop him off at certain times and in between he goes back but he's like he's really silent he doesn't say anything but he does his job he's there like like clockwork he always shows up when he needs to and he always takes Arthur there and back again so at first so Arthur goes there for one day he barely gets there like he gets there pretty late in the day because of the timing of the tides and he sees the woman in black but he doesn't have a lot of time and not a lot of daylight to go through papers so he goes back to the town when he gets back to the town he says that you know it might make just more sense he'll get his work done faster if he just stays at the house instead of coming back to the village every night because he can barely get anything done and everyone in the village is like you sure you want to do that you sure you want to stay overnight in the house and he's like yeah it's just it's more efficient it's faster and like he I think he mentioned someone again that he's seen the woman in black again and they're just like yikes but he doesn't believe in ghosts and there's nothing that freaky has happened he's seen a woman who was in mourning like whatever so he's there to do his job he wants to get it done so they can't talk him out of it but his for the guy that met him on the train he's like let me give you my dog or one of my dogs to take with you the dog's name is spider so he's like okay and it's like nice to have company so he has the dog with him so then he does spend the night at the house and he sees the woman in black again this time he is more freaked out because like what she's doing is not like if he can't like explain it away anymore because like a door that was totally locked before is now unlocked and he hears like a rocking chair well he doesn't know it's a rocking chair he hears a thudding and then he goes up and he realizes that it's a rocking chair and he finds an abandoned nursery and then like he goes he starts going through all the paperwork and he finds letters and everything and he discovers that this woman and had a child out of wedlock and that had been forced to give her child to her like um sister-in-law or her sister and her brother-in-law whatever to raise as their own because you know propriety she ended up coming to the house later to see the kid I don't think as a governess but like she was permitted to see the kid later because she was kind of relentless so I wanted to see the kid but then the kid died on a carriage right across the causeway because there's like the dangerous mud and water and that's something else that Arthur hears he hears he thinks he's hearing an accident and he rushes outside and there's like mist and fog and then he realizes that this is that accident playing itself over and over again every night so he hears it again and that's when he's like this is obviously not actually happening so this is probably a haunting or it's my mind playing tricks on me so he pieces all that together and then finally learns that children have been dying every time the woman of black is seen that's and that all those children he saw before at the graveyard for the funeral are dead they're not real and they're all it's all like circumstantial which I think makes it scarier so every time the woman of black has been seen kids die but it's always the kid of the person who has seen her not just any kid and it's always an accident or illness like it could be explained by just bad luck but the the timing of it the coincidence of it every single time is making everyone think that it is this woman in black but there's nothing like concrete nothing substantial every single one of these kids has died of either a tragic accident or natural causes so you could write it off as like a superstitious little town that's wanting to blame someone because they're all explainable deaths after sorting through everything and getting his shit together and going through the papers Arthur gets out of there I also should have opened by telling you this that the framing device for the book is that Arthur is older now he's like in his he's middle aged and he's married for the second time and his step kids want to tell ghost stories on Christmas and he finds that whole idea very triggering and so then he's decided after that that it might be like cathartic to write down what happened to him when he was a young man so that's this story I recall that now because so he leaves this town behind and he's like he thinks that that's it but like he's done with that like that was scary but it's over and it's done and that part of his life is over and he gets married later on when he returns to his normal life in London he gets married and he has a kid and then they're in the park one day and his wife and the little boy that he has um want to do a little pony ride in the park and suddenly like they lose control of the of the carriage and it goes like racing towards a tree and there's a tragic accident both his wife and the boy die and just as he sees that carriage colliding with the tree Arthur turns and he sees the woman in black standing by the tree so he couldn't escape her curse even by leaving the town and which explains why now in the present day he's remarried and those are not his kids those are his wife's kids and they're fully grown so it's just like chilling that there was nowhere to escape and that's pretty much how it ends which I like it was creepy and because you could kind of still explain all of it like what happened to his wife and kid it was an accident like they lost control of the horse and it ran into a tree like that could just happen and be tragic but he saw her again which you know you could say he's crazy or it's really the woman in black doing it I thought that was so much creepier than the movie so in the movie to begin with there's no framing device of it being the future and he's telling it now it's just opens with him already mourning the death of his wife because she died in childbirth so he's a single father who's already like super depressed and he has a little boy and the little boy has like a nanny looking after him and he keeps flashing back to memories of his wife who's dead now and he's like really upset about it so he's like not like a young happy man like going to this village he's like already super emo and so then his firm this isn't like uh we're gonna give you more responsibility type thing they're sending him because they're like he's been he's been like a fuck up at work because he's been so moody and depressed so they're like we're sending on this assignment and if you fuck this up like we're done like you're like we're not a charity or a business so if you can't work here then you can't work here so he's like I have to do this for my family or I'll lose my job which again the whole tone of it is like totally different from the book in the book he's like happy until he gets to that town and that's what like ruins his life so he's like super sad and emo but he goes to this town and when he goes to the town everyone is like really hostile to him and hostile about the house they're not like warm and welcoming they're like glaring at him like he's already evil and they find out why he's there they're acting like he's like purposely there to incite more hauntings I don't know they're like really in that really cliche horror movie kind of way where you go to a village and everyone's just like peeking out of windows at you and glaring at you it's just like so cliche and it makes it less scary to me it's way scarier to me that everyone's like really nice and normal until you mention the house and they're like oh that makes it more mysterious anyway so people are pretty much warning Moth the house to begin with so he's already dreading going there but he's going there because he's like if I don't do my job then I lose my job and I have to feed my family he's not like a young man who's like I'm here to do my job and like whatever they are they're being a little weird about the house but like it's fine he's like for sure that this is not fine but going anyway and then the way the children are dying is really like cartoonish it's not like unhappy accidents that people have tied to the woman in black these are like this is like a bird box or like the happening where the kids are like killing themselves it's not like the woman in black was seen and then like the next thing you know Susie has scarlet fever or the woman in black has been seen and suddenly a kid fell off a swing no these kids are like once a woman in black is seen they like jump out of a window or there's a horrific moment where this girl has she drank lye and um Daniel Radcliffe who plays Arthur so Arthur finds the girl and he's like oh no oh no and she just like spits blood at him and now she's like the next to go but all the kids are dying in like a really absurd way so like there's no doubt it's that kids don't act like this like there's clearly like a haunting creepy thing going on so he spots the woman in black in much the same way he did in the book where you like Caesar around Caesar on the property kind of whatever and he's going back to going through this papers um it doesn't make sense that he kind of dismisses the woman in black in the movie because he's already basically been told about the haunting already knows there's something up he's not just like oh i'm a nice mourner came to the funeral he's like that's clearly the woman in black but he decides to like go to the house by himself anyway he's not like yeah it's fine he's like no i'm gonna go by myself because this is a horror movie so i have to make terrible decisions and then they add to it another layer of stupid which is that when Arthur goes to visit that man who he met on the train who lends him his dog he goes to visit his house for dinner and it turns out he also lost his kids but the wife is like crazy and not just like crazy because she's like grieving she's like actually like having she's being like possessed and having visions and like during dinner she all of a sudden like loses it and starts like scraping the table like the dinner table and like Arthur later like takes a peek at what she scraped and it's like the image of like i think it's the image of like somebody hanging like by the neck like it's like a rough cartoon of like somebody being hung and it's like meant to be like a premonition of something because she like says stuff that like doesn't make sense like she's being possessed i was like this is so stupid anyway despite all of that weirdness Arthur does go back to the house again intent on spending the night again where the haunting is like way more over the top than it is in the book the woman in black is like it's just like a very cartoonish haunting where she's like a lot of jump scares and appearing out of corners and making things move and it's it's it's like it's creepy like for sure like i kept like you know i would jump it was like stupid like i was like i'm the music and the jump scares are like unnerving me but overall it's stupid it's not a lasting kind of creepy and so he the the story is a little different with her in than it is in the book in the book she was upset that her kid died in that accident and then she ended up dying of a wasting disease which is why her face is all messed up in the movie she was pissed about it and she kept writing angrier and angrier letters about it saying he's mine he's mine he's mine uh he's my kid and then she hung herself so that's just adds one more jump scare because he finds like all of a sudden like there's like she's like hanging in the nursery and then like everything's back to normal again it's like another jump scare which if she died of a wasting disease it's not possible and then we have the added time bomb of like he's invited his son and then i need to come stay with him in this town and like you'd think the moment he saw a single child die in a weird way he would have immediately telegrammed like back to london and been like you know what just kidding don't come here but it's like until the last minute when this like final like most epic of hauntings has occurred that it occurs to him they're like oh my kid is supposed to arrive tomorrow like i need to tell him not to come but of course like the post office is closed the last train is already gone like there's no way he can get word to his kid before he's already gonna be on his way here so he's like oh my god like I have to do something to make sure my kid doesn't come here and die so like how do we like how do we stop her from continuing to haunt this house so the master plan and this is where the movie just goes full off the rails i was like actually laughing he convinces the guy who lent him the dog his wife is cuckoo crazy to go with him in the middle of the night in the dark and go into the like marshy quicksandy mud and go to the site of where the accident happened and he goes out and he like he goes and and tries to dig up the body of the child that this woman lost and it works which is the craziest thing this accident happened who knows how long ago like years before their client died and he but he manages to find the exact site of it and then like he ties a rope around himself in the car and he like dives in and finds the fucking body of the like finds the carriage and the body of the kid and is able to get it out and out of the mud and then they bring it to the house and then they bring the this like half decomposed body of the kid and they put it in the nursery and then he himself turns on all the toys that she's been making operate as part of the haunting like attract her attention i guess like i'm pretty sure like you don't have to call her with the toys anyway he does that so it's extra creepy and then of course she does show up and see the kid and it's like creepy haunting type thing and so arthur thinks he's solved it she's got her kid back haunting resolve done so so he greets his kid and the nanny in the train station he's like there's been a change of plans we're heading back to london immediately we're not staying and of course while he's explaining this to the nanny the kid lets go of his hand as a train is coming and the kid steps off the station platform in front of the train and at the last minute arthur i think he sees the woman in black first and then he turns and he sees his kid in front of the train and then he leaps in front of the train and um after that then we see like the ghost version of arthur and his kid reunited with his dead wife and that's the end it's so stupid okay so i'm pretty sure again it's clear why i think this is stupid in the book he doesn't have a wife or a kid until after the events of this haunting and it comes back to bite him way later on which to me is way scarier like you think you've put it behind you then just kidding you can never put it behind you she'll always find you there's no digging up the body which is absurd to reunite her with her kid like no he just leaves the town and years later it's still haunted by her because he's had a kid and like her haunting has to be complete which is just more chilling here because he's been emo from the beginning then there's no there's not this like gradual like he was happy and everything was fine until he went to this town no like his life was already kind of fucking tragic before he went there and it's just worse now or maybe it's better because he got to be reunited with his dead wife's like i don't really know what the takeaway here is and then the hauntings with her were just so much more like jump scary and like not remotely subtle and the way the kids are dying again what makes it creepy to me in the book is that there is that plausible deniability of is it a haunting or are kids just dying is it like a self-fulfilling prophecy you think you're being haunted and you think your kids are dying because of it like might people be actually causing this to happen themselves i'm the fact that they're just accidents and illness it's not a kid drinking lye or jumping out of a window because then it's it's like it's 100% definitely a haunting it's definitely a ghost which makes all of your actions going to the house extra extra stupid because at least in the book he's like a happy young man and all the townspeople are like but he's like you guys are being weird but whatever i'm going to the house it's my job it makes sense that he was sort of dismiss it and be like oh you know like i'm feeling a little creeped out but you know like it's just because i'm by myself in a creepy old house like it's fine it's fine and then oh shit it's definitely not fine because there's definitely a woman in black here a slow breakdown of that in the book is what really wakes it work and i think the there's no reason the movie couldn't do that there's no reason they couldn't make him like a happy young man who went to the village where slowly like he learned about this house and like what's going on and then like they did like an epilogue at the end of the movie where many years later like they don't have to have the framing device of him as an old man now writing down a story you don't need that that's what makes it work as a book because you need a reason for it to be written down but they could open it with him as a young man and then at the end do many years later where he's in the park with his kid and the kid dies like that'd be such a spooky way to end it instead of two seconds after he's fixed it by digging up the body in the train station where he once again is an idiot because he lets go of his kid's hand and i was like don't let go like i know you think you fixed it but like are you fucking kidding me of course and then the kid dies and he dies too and no one is surprised like i didn't feel creeped out at the end of the movie i felt annoyed and was like that was stupid so yeah i think it's pretty clear why i think the book is better and again i do not see why those changes were made there are they could have made changes again taken out the framing device of the old man telling his own story you don't need that in the movie and that's fine if they wanted to add a few more instances in the town of like seeing her or like if they wanted to instead of just have townspeople tell him about the dead children they could do flashbacks to when those kids died or i think you could add stuff and make it scarier but checking up the body and the cartoonish way the kids are dying and the ending just so stupid just so stupid why i think it would make a really good movie and again the play the play nails it the play is amazing and super scary super scary so i highly recommend the play if you have a chance to see it do it let me know in the comments down below if you've read the woman in black if you saw the movie the woman in black if you've seen the play um if you agree with my assessment of the two if i've encouraged you to pick up or experience whichever one you haven't yet um if you've only seen the movie i recommend the book it's much better if you've only read the book don't bother with the movie maybe if you want to have a laugh yeah so let me know all the things in the comments down below i post videos on saturdays so like and subscribe and i'll see you next saturday