Woman in Black Certification

The horror film 'The Woman in Black' is certfied at a 15, however, after releasing the film, the main age range of the audience was between 30 - 40 years old, which is older than the producers original target audience of 15-25. The older audience that watched the film, does not reflect the films' certification as they had targeted their film at a younger audience, and marketed the film to attract this particular audience. For example, the marketers for this film used social networking and viral marketing to increase popularity of this film. This targets a specific audience as stereotypically, young people are more involved in social media than people who are older.

The first trailer of 'The Woman in Black' was shown at a ComiCon in London, which is a convention dedicated to comic books, films, TV and games. At this convention, there is a range of ages, therefore the exposure to this trailer may have lead to a range of ages wanting to watch the full film rather than the specific target audience that 'The Woman in Black' had in mind.

The trailer of this film was also played in a few showings of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2' in July 2011. The main actor in 'The Woman in Black', Daniel Radcliffe, stars in 'Harry Potter', again, the 'Harry Potter' collection is watched by a range of audiences. However, a minute long teaser was released on MTV, a channel that primarily is watched by a younger audience, similar to the target audience of 'The Woman in Black'.

'The Woman in Black's' target audience wasn't as widely watched by this age range, therefore when they came out with the sequel: ' Woman in Black: Angel of Death', it had a lower certification of a 12A, to target their audience more. Also, 'Angel of Death', was set 40 years after the hauntings that happened at 'El Marsh House' in the previous film, reaching out to their target audience in order to make it seem more modern.