The Woman in Black has a long history in the UK -- before receiving this recent remake from Hammer Films, there was a successful book, which was later adapted into a long-running stage play, which was then turned into a creepy underrated made-for-TV movie in the late 80s. I liked the original film, but also don't deny that it had some room for improvement. This remake does manage to develop certain aspects better than the original, but also falls short in others, making it a good, but not a great remake.

Set in the early 1900s, the story follows a young lawyer sent to a small town to gather documents from a recently deceased woman that would aid his employers into selling the estate. While there he's forced to stay in the woman's secluded mansion home, where he encounters various strange unexplained sounds and visions of a dark figured woman. He soon learns of the town's ghost story of the "Woman in Black". Apparently she's the vengeful spirit of a woman who lost her own child and now she's determined to kill the town's remaining children.

South Korea has been slowly trying to recreate the success of The Host since its release in 2006, but have since failed. At first it seemed as though Sector 7 would finally rectify the situation, but after having seen the movie, I'm sad to say that it didn't. The film is just all over the place and the questionable CG didn't help matters either.

The story revolves around a small group of oil-riggers working off an aged drilling station dubbed Sector 7. With years of non-existent oil, the crew are close to calling it quits until the old captain returns to suggest drilling one last time. Success!! And Sector 7 is saved from its seemingly inevitable closure. However, this comes with a cost, as the crew soon discovers when people start mysteriously dying off. The death's are quickly revealed to be thanks to a large aquatic creature roaming the station and it's up to the surviving crew and its resident "touch chick" to put a stop to the foul beast before it devours everyone.

The first Hostel was a movie I surprisingly enjoyed. It was gory, creative, and ballsy for a theatrical release. I admired Eli Roth's attempt to (along with Saw) bring forth a very dark and incredibly gory approach to death in mainstream horror. The sequel was a disappointment for me, as it was simply more of the same, but at least the gore was amped up and we were given a little backstory on the society that runs these torture chambers. Now, four years later, we're given a low-grade straight-to-DVD sequel that's nothing more than an obvious cash-in on the Hostel name.

Eli Roth takes a step back and lets his friend Scott Spiegel (Intruder, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money) take the reigns, which I wasn't entirely against since the last two horror fares from Spiegel offered some clever camera tricks that I had hoped to see him revisit with this sequel. Sadly that's not the case here, as aside from a lot of gratuitous shots of the camera following someone's ass (for whatever reason), it's all a pretty straight forward directorial effort.