Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
The transparent title character from 2012's "The Woman in Black" is resurrected in this sequel, which abandons atmosphere for cheap scares.

Name : Ben Kenigsberg / Alias : New York Times
The director, Tom Harper, seems less interested in allegory than in monotonous, conventional goosing, the kind that involves flickering lights and a creaky rocking chair.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death is an improvement on its predecessor. That said, the new installment is, at best, a serviceable creep show, one with far more chills than thrills.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
It's mostly deadly dull, and when it does liven up a tad, the haunted house tale offers only wan shock tactics.

Name : Kyle Anderson / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The Woman may be back for another fright, but Angel of Death doesn't haunt like it should.

Name : Bruce Demara / Alias : Toronto Star
She's back, the Woman in Black, and it does give one pause to wonder if it's for no better reason than to scare up some more box office lucre.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Director Tom Harper and screenwriter Jon Croker offer up plenty of atmosphere, but every good idea this sequel has to offer winds up taking a backseat to the most obvious cat-in-the-closet "BOO!" moments imaginable.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's a dour, drab, dark movie, enlivened by some moderately effective chills in the first half but ultimately undone by its downbeat aimlessness.

Name : Simon Abrams / Alias : Village Voice
Flawed but genuinely creepy ghost story The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death is disappointing, but only because it comes close to greatness.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The material feels stale from nearly the first scene featuring the threatening old manse.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Redundancy is about all it offers, despite an entirely new set of characters and a story set 40 years after the early 20th-century original.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
A handsomely made but dramatically inert and not very scary sequel to 2012's surprise-hit ($127 million worldwide) Edwardian chiller.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
The 1940s setting gives the film's first half some unearned gravity, but by the end the jump-scares and rote plot frightens away the good will.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Predictable shock tactics, drippy wartime romance and scenes in which the characters leaf tremulously through Victorian photo albums and spout exposition.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
A tortured use of another movie's absurd mythology to help make muddled quasi-satirical points, while indulging the apparently fail-safe punchline of saying the word "purge" about once a minute.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Wrongheaded, utterly incompetent, and nearly laugh-free .

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
The movie as a whole is such an incompetent train wreck, you can't look away, just to see how much worse it can get.