When you're not going to win on points, you may as well try to shoot the moon — that seems to be the thought process behind Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, the sequel to Marvel's 2007 Ghost Rider. Realizing that their stunt rider who turns into a flaming skeleton-monster character and their star who turns in what are less performances than performance art were unlikely to result in a film that could be thought of as good in any traditional sense, the studios have aimed instead to make something that embraces its own lunacy.
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The pleasures of the period ghost story The Woman in Black are something like the creepy shiver of delight you get from Edward Gorey’s illustrated poem The Gashlycrumb Tinies, which describes horrific deaths suffered by innocents of yore (“I is for Ida who drowned in a lake/J is for James who took lye by mistake”), accompanied by heavily crosshatched drawings of wan moppets wearing black cotton stockings and mournful expressions. Terrible things happen in The Woman in Black: Children are snatched from their parents by the Grim Reaper, nurseries become insane asylums and numerous unseen nasties go bump in the night. But director James Watkins has just the right touch with the polishing cloth: The picture has the soft, dark gleam of a piece of Victorian mourning jewelry, and its gloom is always offered with a wink.
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