The Woman in Black: Angel of Death review: Back to the old house

As you were. In keeping with the previous instalment of this daft yet delightful ghost train attraction, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death features so many household creaks and bangs it ought to have been called The Woman in Black: Have Your Boiler Serviced Regularly. Or The Woman in Black: Carbon Monoxide Kills.

The creepy, vaguely Victorian toys – defaced doll, gimp-eyed monkey – are back and ready to spook. The rickety house, beautifully fashioned by set decorator Niamh Coulter and production designer Kave Quinn for the original film, is now even more ramshackle. Kudos to the new team of Jacqueline Abrahams and Jille Azis.

Forty years have passed since grown-up Harry Potter was terrorised at Eel Island and now the ghost lady of the house is on hand to scare the bejeezus out of a group of vulnerable children lately evacuated from Blitz-ravaged London. It falls to schoolteacher Eve (Phoebe Fox) to protect the ragamuffins from the marauding spectre that noisily clatters around the house of an evening. Eve’s stiff-upper-lipped colleague, Jean (Helen McCrory), remains sceptical long after the ghost starts producing jump-scares like some kind of incorporeal conveyer belt. But Eve does find an ally in dashing local pilot Harry (Jeremy Irvine). Together, can they save little orphan Edward (Oaklee Pendergast) from the clutches of the titular villainess?

Woman in Black 2 is, in most respects, none-more-sequel. There are more haunted nursery scenes, more ghost orphans and more unlikely old recordings and documents outlining a backstory. There are traumatic flashbacks to a hospital. There's a mad hermit in an abandoned asylum. If it's scary, it's in here somewhere.

Director Tom Harper (of The Scouting Book for Boys) keeps the pop-ups coming. Fox makes for a stand-up Final Girl. And groups of teenage viewers are guaranteed to communally squeal as if One Direction were still peaking.