Exclusive: Director Tom Harper Talks The Woman in Black 2 Angel of Death

This Friday, evil returns to the Eel Marsh House in The Woman in Black 2 Angel of Death. Directed by Tom Harper and starring Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine and Helen McCrory, the sequel takes place during World War II and follows a group of school children who are evacuated to the doomed residence seeking solace from London following a devastating bombing. Once they arrive, the children and their caretakers soon realize that the horrors of war aren’t the only thing they’ll have to survive against.

Daily Dead recently spoke to Harper about his involvement with The Woman in Black 2, the challenges of scaring modern audiences and much more.

Thanks for taking time to speak with me today, Tom, and great job on the movie. Can you start off by discussing what it was that initially appealed to you about the story of The Woman in Black as a filmmaker when you were considering taking on the project?

Tom Harper: Thanks so much. I was first asked to take a meeting about the film but honestly, I really wasn’t sure where the story was going to go. I had enjoyed the first film and thought it had wrapped up everything nicely so I was unsure of just where we could go with this idea without being repetitive. Simon (Oakes) then spoke to Susan Hill and they came up with this great idea of the next film taking place in the future so that we could introduce new characters into this environment which I thought was very clever.

Jon (Croker) then put the script together and I loved how he used World War II as the backdrop because it heightened the terror. I can’t even begin to imagine the fear people must have felt during that time and how helpless those parents must have felt evacuating their children, often to an unknown place. That must have been terrifying. And what’s more terrifying than believing you’ve finally found sanctuary, only to realize that pure evil exists there and it wants to kill you. That’s a powerful setting.

Did you get to work closely with Jon on the story?

Tom Harper: I did; it was great collaborating with him. Most of the story was his ideas but we were able to sit and brainstorm a lot during pre-production which was a great experience.

I certainly enjoyed the first Woman in Black, but felt that you did a great job of making the sequel feel a bit bigger- in terms of taking the story outside of the house and making the threat feel much bigger this time around. Was that something you were conscientiously trying to do to differentiate this film from the first?

Tom Harper: In some ways, yes. For me, everything about part two should always come back around to the first film and that feeling of isolation when you’re at the house. We used the setting to connect the two films and just build on what was established originally.

I also really wanted to maximize the location as a whole too; of course we kept the focus on the house but the overall setting- with the sea and the marshes and the cemetery- were all incredibly fun places to use as well and I thought by utilizing other areas of the property we could elevate that sense of fear too. We always made sure the house was front and center though.

This is very much a traditionally told horror story and I was curious if you found it more challenging to evoke that sense of fear here, since modern audiences seem to be a little more hardened these days?

Tom Harper: That’s a really interesting question and I’m not sure if I have a definitive answer for you. I’d say that audiences today are definitely smarter about being scared but fear is universal. If you care about characters and are drawn into a well-told story, you’re going to be more susceptible to being scared.

I believe wholeheartedly that the more character-based horror movies are the ones that give you more as a storyteller to draw from. You can find real stakes within a story that has great characters to it and then continue to raise those stakes through terrifying twists. In the end though, everything always comes down to the story.