by Ben Bussey

As an Englishman born into the 1980′s, I more or less grew up on Hammer Horror. Catching their movies late night on TV was my the backbone of my education in the genre. It’s practically on the national curriculum over here. In spite of this – or perhaps, depending on your point of view, because of this – I’ve been extremely wary of this new production house using the Hammer name. Their first output, the webseries Beyond The Rave, was lacklustre in the extreme, and feelings remain mixed on their upcoming Let Me In. (Marc is optimistic, a sentiment I respect but struggle to share.) But earlier today Shock Till You Drop broke some news on a new Hammer production which, given the property and the wealth of talent on board, is pretty damned exciting:

‘Hammer Films has acquired the feature film rights to Susan Hill’s bestselling chiller The Woman In Black.

Up-and-coming Brit helmer James Watkins (Eden Lake) is attached to direct the film, from a script by Jane Goldman (who also adapted the upcoming Kick-Ass and Stardust).

The Woman In Black revolves around a young lawyer who is ordered to travel to a remote village to take care of a deceased client’s papers. The young man glimpses a mysterious woman dressed only in black during his stay, leading to the uncovering of a tragic secret.’

My review of Eden Lake was the very first contribution I made to this site (back when we were still called Deadly DVD), and it was a powerful directorial debut indeed, powerful enough to inspire Marc to throw the DVD across the room in a rage. It totally marked out Watkins as a director to watch, and as such any further films from him are of interest. This interest can only be increased further by the source material, which has also been adapted into a stageplay renowned in the UK for scaring audiences shitless. Add to the mix Goldman, well on the way to establishing herself as one of the foremost adaptation screenwriters (Stardust was pretty great, and Britt has had nothing but good things to say about the upcoming Kick-Ass), and you can see why there should be considerable cause for excitement. On top of which, as this is a good old fashioned period chiller, it feels like a title truly worthy of Hammer as it used to be. Music to English ears, I tell thee.

Once again, more on this as we get it.